


pump mud through my veins

by wariangle



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, F/F, Minor Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-03-20 05:42:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3638907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wariangle/pseuds/wariangle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"No," Clarke repeats, louder. She straightens, reaching her full height. They might be able to disregard the girl they remember, but Clarke, Keryon kom Heda kom Trikru, won't be so easily dismissed. "I'm going out to meet them. They know me. You are a threat and will be treated as such. I can give you a respite, at the very least."</p><p>And with that, she turns her back on them and marches out the room, out the Ark, to meet the oncoming army.</p><p>-</p><p>AU in which Clarke fell down from the sky by herself five years before the Ark comes crashing down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I really shouldn't starting up a long work like this right now, 'cause I'll be busy enough as it is with schoolwork and stuff. hopefully I'll get it done before season three, at least.
> 
> also, come say hi on [tumblr](http://wariangle.tumblr.com/)!

Autumn swept in early this year, leaving the woods shrouded in guise of fire and the air with an icy bite to it. Outside, the temperature plummeted quickly with the sun, but inside the interior of their _kliraun_ is warmed by a crackling fire and the intimate tangle of their bodies beneath the bedcovers.

"Don't," Clarke's breathes hoarsely, grabbing hold of Lexa's wrist to keep her still inside of her. "Don't pull out."

Ignoring the sweat sliding slickly between her front and Clarke's back, Lexa curls more tightly around her lover and reaches up to kiss her red-flushed cheek. Clarke is limp and heavy in her arms, her eyes closed as she struggles to regain her breath. There's is a softness to her when she's like this, all spent and content, that's close to impossible for Lexa to resist.

She moves her hand carefully, thrusting up at what she very well knows is a good angle, and Clarke groans, shifting and parting her legs for Lexa to press in deeper, to get her exactly where she wants her.

This time, it's a lot less frantic, all slow and gentle, and when Clarke comes, Lexa captures the sounds she makes in a deep, sloppy kiss.

Lexa wipes her hand carelessly on the covers and Clarke rearranges herself until she is on her side, head pillowed on her arm, with a soft smile playing on her lips and the firelight reflecting in her golden hair.

For a second Lexa has to look away, suddenly overwhelmed by the love for the woman in her bed piercing through her heart.

Clarke rests her hand on Lexa's bare hip, lets her thumb run back and forth across the sharp cut of her hipbone. "Leyla wants to take a hunting party south at the end of the week," she says and Lexa sighs.

"I'm aware," she says, kissing Clarke's forehead. "She has already made the same request to me."

"This winter will be harsh, by the looks of it," Clarke says. "We need all the food we can get."

"We'll live," Lexa says, brushing her concerns off. They will - it's what they do. They survive, no matter what kind of obstacle stands in their path. After what her people have lived through this far, a bad winter won't be the end of them. "That's Monow's territory."

"I'm sure they'll live," Clarke says. She smiles, but there's an edge of steel to her mockery.

Lexa rolls her eyes.

"Just let them go," Clarke says, and Lexa sighs once more, stretching out beside her _keryon_ and fixing her gaze in the ceiling, as if she expects to find the future writ there. She dislikes autumn - the orange leaves makes the acid fog harder to spot and the Mountain Men always seem to grow more hungry with the onset of winter. She'll need to keep her warriors close.

But without hunts, her people will grow restless and unruly, something that is far more likely – and more dangerous – than that'll starve.

"Fine," she agrees finally. "Send them off the day after tomorrow. I'm leaving with the raiding party tomorrow for that bunker."

Clarke hums. "Bring back any medicine you find, please. Not just iron."

"I will," Lexa promises. She has come to trust Clarke's medicine - she has proven time and again what it can do - but many, even after they've come to accept Clarke as their leader's _keryon_ and her second-in-command, are still distrustful of her healing ways. But she knows that they need it just as much as whatever iron they can get their hands on and melt down to make blades and arrow-tips.

If all goes well, perhaps by this time next year, they will no longer have to fear the Mountain. If all goes well, they will no longer be in such desperate need for weapons. The only iron she will be bringing back then will be for tools and jewelery.

She curls herself closer around Clarke as both of them fall quiet, ready for sleep. These are the moments Lexa cherishes, when she has Clarke content and warm, as safe from harm as she would have been in her home up in the sky. There have been many nights, spent in the dark, when Clarke has told her of the Ark and her life there, and Lexa knows it's no paradise, but at least she would have been safe from all the monsters that walk this Earth.

Cupping a hand around Lexa's face, Clarke kisses her goodnight and turns over to lie on her other side, dragging Lexa's arm across her own waist. Lexa buries her face in her otherworldly woman's hair and forces herself to push all unpleasant thoughts from her mind and fall asleep.

That is the night the sky comes down.

 

Clarke doesn't know if it's the light or the rallying cry of the guards echoing throughout Tondc that wakes her, but she is out of bed before she has time to register it, her mind blurry from sleep and dreams. Lexa is already half-way dressed and before Clarke has even managed to find her pants, Lexa has grabbed her sword and dashed out of the room.

Clarke hears how she begins issuing in a loud voice even before she's completely out the door. Tugging on her boots and stumbling out in Lexa's wake, she is met with organized chaos as warriors mill around the town court, readying themselves for battle. Torches burn outside every house and tent, sending a glowering light through the darkness.

"Caris!" she calls, grabbing hold of the second as she passes her, bow in her hand and the quiver at her hip filled to brimming with arrows. "What's happening?"

Caris swings around to face her and Clarke almost back up from the unabashed anger in her eyes. "Your people," she spits. "They attacked! The Vale village is burning."

Tearing herself loose from Clarke's grip, she runs to take her place in the forming lines while Clarke stands rooted in place, frozen with dawning horror.

She looks up at the sky, but it yields no information. It looks the same, except for the wide rim of orange blazing across the horizon, lighting up the night. For a moment, she is thankful that whatever happened happened where it did – the Vale village lies on rocky mountain ground, where the fire won't easily spread to the dense forests.

Then the implications of what has happened suddenly hits her and gut-wrenching fear grips her, propels her forward. "Lexa!" she calls, pushing through the lines of warriors, many of whom are suddenly sending her the same suspicions looks they did when she first arrived down here, before they came to know her. "Lexa!"

Lexa turns and with three rows of warriors between them she meets Clarke's eyes, causing Clarke to stop dead in her tracks again as she sees that same suspicion flickering in her lover's eyes. It's faint, but no less there.

It is gone in the flash of a second as Lexa catches sight of Clarke's distraught face, and replaced with something that's as close as Lexa would ever get to a pleading look, as if asking her to understand. To forgive her.

Then she turns back forward and gives the marching order, her voice echoing even through the clamor of the gathering warriors.

 

With the early hours of morning comes dark clouds and a heavy tapestry of rain. It's a blessing - it won't be long before it puts down the fire still blazing to the east - but Clarke dressed for haste when she saddled her horse and rode of into the night, not the weather. She is drenched through to the skin and the wind is whipping the rain into her face, turning her sight into a blur. But after hundreds of tours on Alice's back, she knows these lands like the back of her hand and it is easy keeping the mare on the right paths using the orange glow at the horizon as mark.

She is driving Alice as hard as she safely can through the fading night. She will doubtlessly make it to the fallen Ark before Lexa and the army, especially with all this mud slowing the advancing force down, but the more time she has the more she will be able to do to stop this from reaching cataclysmic proportions. She knows that Lexa has sent out scouts and that they will reach the Ark before her, and she preys their mission is scouting only and that no Ark survivors will catch sight of them and fire. If they do, this will be over before it has even begun.

It took a long time for Clarke to accept that she was stranded down here with no possible way to contact the Ark, much less get back home, but she never stopped hoping that she would see her people again. She even tried to sneak into Mount Weather that one time, before Lexa's patrols brought her back. But whatever joy she feels about the possibility of seeing her mother and friends again is eclipsed by worry. She can't even be sure that anyone survived the crash, but they must have, she thinks. They must have.

The ground falls away beneath Alice's thundering hooves to the roar of her pulse rushing in her ears.

 

It is fully light when she crests the hill overlooking the crash-site. To her left, she can see a column of thick, gray smoke rising to the sky and and feels the pain of all those deaths, hoping against sense that most of them got out alright.

The remnant of the Ark lying in front of her seems almost pitiful in its charred, wretched state. It is just a small part of it, she realizes after a second. All that survived the fall.

With her heart like a heavy stone of grief in her chest, she urges Alice forward and be begins to step gingerly down the steep, rocky hillside. She reins her in a little to keep her progression slow and make it evident that she is alone. She wishes she would have had the sense to put on the shirt she had when she arrived here, small as it has become, to claim some bit of kinship with the people down there. It's been a long time, after all.

Once safely down the hill, she stops to slide down from Alice's back and leads her forward, still keeping her pace carefully measured. She has barely passed the first bit of Ark wreckage before a squad of armed guards rushing towards her, guns at the ready.

She stops and raises the hand not holding Alice's reins to show that she means no harm and is mostly unarmed. In hindsight, she should probably have lost the knife strapped to her thigh, but it's weight have become too familiar, just another part of her, after all these years on the ground.

"I'm Clarke Griffin," she calls to the guards and they stop dead in their tracks, clearly taken aback at the mention of her name. "Take me to your Chancellor."

 

"Clarke!"

Before Clarke can register anything of the room she's been lead to, she is in her mother's arms, hugged tight enough for her ribs to hurt. Hot tears form in her eyes at the achingly familiar scent of _Mom_ and she hugs her back, just as hard.

Then Abby steps back and holds her at arms length to look at her and her smile drains away and is replaced with something Clarke can't read. Sorrow, perhaps, at all the years they've lost. Shock, maybe, at the sight of what her daughter has become.

Clarke is no longer the girl she was when the cell-block she was kept in collapsed from its moorings and plunged towards Earth, leaving her stranded on the planet her forebearers so struggled to escape almost ten decades ago. She had laid quivering in the wreck of the prison block, among the bodies of her two dead cellmates, and waited for the poisonous air to kill her.

It wouldn't, she eventually realized and that was when she had risen and taken her first uncertain step on the ground, her every muscle and joint hurting from the collision. She had squinted against the sky, high up in the blue sky and tried to recall every detail of every Earth skill lesson she'd ever had even as she wondered if not killing herself would be preferable to trying to survive alone on in this abandoned, ruined world.

She had survived, but not unaltered. She wonders what her mother sees when she looks at her now, with charms and braids in her air, ink and scars on her skin, a knife strapped to her thigh. She is dirty and disheveled from her breakneck ride here, but so are they, she thinks as she looks around. They'll learn soon enough what it's like, living on Earth.

"Mom," she says, grabbing hold of Abby's arms. "All of you," she adds, addressing the room at large. Jaha still wear the Chancellor's pin and the council members looks pretty much the same from what she remembers. Not much ever changes on the Ark. Until now. "There is an army heading this way. Just _trust_ me," she says as her mother opens her mouth. "It's a large force and in this state, you won't have a chance. They have interpreted your... landing as an attack. Some part of the Ark hit a village - I don't know the extent of the damages, but the Trikru will claim retribution."

"How do you know this?" Jaha asks.

"They took me in," Clarke says hastily. "Without them, I'd probably be dead. Listen to me - _do not meet them with fire_. I will go to them, on your behalf. With me between them and you, they won't attack."

"Are you sure?" Kane asks. "You've been with them for, what, five years? If they are as bloodthirsty as you make them out to be, would they really hesitate to kill you to get to us?"

Clarke sends him a frosty look. "They are not bloodthirsty," she says. "We all do what we must, to survive down here. And yes, I'm sure they wouldn't kill me to get to you."

"Clarke..." Abby begins, but is interrupted by a guard rushing into the tent, eyes-wide.

"Soldiers!" he yells. "They're coming towards us!"

Every head in the Council room swivels towards Clarke, who curses under her breath. How could Lexa be here so quick? She made better time on horseback than she'd expected, but that large a force can't have crossed that distance easily in the rain and mud. Did Lexa send a section ahead?

"What kind of weaponry do they have?" Jaha asks.

"Do you know their plan of attack?" That's Kane. "Their number?"

"We could man every scrap of wreckage," Major Byrne says, "to use as cover. It won't be easy, getting past that. We have the firepower, I think."

"How much ammunition survived the fall?" someone else asks.

"No," Clarke says, interrupting them. "I'm going out there. You are doing nothing, at this point."

The room at large ignores her, to busy making plans that will end in blood and inevitable death.

"Clarke..." her mother tries, gently.

"No," Clarke repeats, louder. She straightens, reaching her full height. They might be able to disregard the girl they remember, but Clarke, _Keryon kom Heda kom Trikru_ , won't be so easily dismissed. "I'm going out to meet them. They _know_ me. You are a threat and will be treated as such. I can give you a respite, at the very least."

And with that, she turns her back on them and marches out the room, out the Ark, to meet the oncoming army.

It's not Lexa, is the first thing she realizes as she gets to the edge of the crash-site. It's Anya, something that she should have foreseen, but somehow overlooked in her panicked rush through the woods. This is Anya's territory, after all, her people in the burning village, and she is here to exact revenge.

They see her, but doesn't stop until they're about a yard away. "Step aside, Clarke," Anya says. "You know I have to do this. Thirty-four of mine lay dead and a village is destroyed - all in one night. We need this enemy gone."

Clarke steps closer, until she can put her hand on the neck of Anya's steed. "I know," she says quietly. She and Anya didn't get off to a good start, but they have come a long way since, long enough for mutual friendship and respect to grow between them. Clarke knows very well that that might be the cost of the bargain to save the lives of her people. Both her people.

"Then move."

"It wasn't an attack, Anya. The ship fell from the sky and broke. It was an accident."

"If this is what they can do by accident, what could they do by force?" Anya asks.

"A lot," Clarke admits. "And imagine that power on your side. Against the Mountain Men."

Anya scoffs. "That is Lexa's dream."

"You swore fealty," Clarke reminds her, unnecessarily. The bond between a warrior and a second, even a former one, is to strong to be easily severed, whether by time or circumstances.

"Fealty, yes," Anya says. "Obedience, no. And this is my right. Lexa would not deny me. _Jus drein jus daun_."

"All I'm asking is for you to wait until she gets here," Clarke says. If she can't get Anya to turn from this, she can at least stall her.

Anya looks at her for a long moment. "If you think your _keryon_ will spare this threat for your sake, I think you are mistaken," she says and Clarke thinks, _I know_. "But I will wait." She turns to her warriors, standing restlessly behind her, and gives the order to stand down.

"Until the Commander comes," she says to Clarke and steers her horse away.

Clarke hurries back into what's left of the Ark.

 

"Tell me what happened," she demands the council. "Why the descent? Why now? How did you know that Earth was even safe?"

"We didn't," Abby says. "This wasn't planned. You know about the oxygen failure - the system broke down even faster than we expected. Coming back to Earth was our only chance. We decided we rather wanted to try trying than caught in a steel box in the sky."

Clarke opens her mouth, but Jaha intercepts her. "Now you tell us," he says, "what are these people waiting out there?"

"The Trikru," Clarke says. "These woods are their territory. You are invading their land."

"We thought Earth was uninhabited," Kane says.

"Well, it isn't," Clarke says, a little sharply.

"Do you think we can settle the situation?" Jaha asks.

For a brief second, Clarke considers lying, but instead she sighs. "I don't know," she admits.

"Surely they must see sense," Kane says. "What are they, savages?"

He looks at her braids and tattoos and dirty clothing, and that's precisely what he sees, she realizes. That angers her.

"There is much you don't know about this place," she says. "It's a harsh world and it takes a harsh way of living to survive down here. You will soon learn."

"You seem to care a lot about these people," Abby cuts in as Kane opens his mouth. "You've... you've been taken well care of?"

"I have," Clarke says, giving her a soft smile. "And I do."

 

It's late in the morning when Lexa arrives. She, Anya, Leyla and Gustus are lead to the Council room by a pair of guards sending nervous glances at them, these heavily armed people with warpaint smeared black like space around their eyes and their faces set in grim determination. Lexa's hand is wrapped tightly around the hilt of her blade and the tilt of her chin seems as sharp as its finely-honed edge.

Clarke is surprised when Lexa comes to stand next to her - not close enough to make an unmistakable claim, but at least to mark Clarke as one of them - rather than keep her distance to deny her enemies any hint of weakness or soft spot to exploit. She keeps her eyes on the Council, though, almost careful with the way she avoids Clarke's eyes.

Clarke doesn't miss the way her mother's gaze travel between the two of them, a small furrow forming between her brows.

Lexa rises her chin in that regal pose Clarke knows so well and says, "Ai laik Heda Lexa kom Trikru." She fixes the whole council with her her black-rimmed gaze, filling the room with her presence. "I am Commander Lexa of the Woodlands. You trespass."

A beat of silence follows. "So," Jaha then begins, but Anya immediately interrupts him.

"You burned one of our villages down," she says. "That is a declaration of war."

"It was an accident," Abby says.

"Tell that to the thirty-four you burned alive," Anya says. "You will suffer the pain of those deaths."

"I come with thousands warriors at my back," Lexa cuts in. "You are weak and wounded. You have no room for demands or negotiations."

Clarke swivels so that she is, once again, standing between the Trikru and the people from the Ark. "Yes," she says in a tone that allows no argument, "they do."

Lexa's jaw clenches, but apart from that her face betrays little.

"Please," Jaha says. "We apologize for all the damage our landing caused – but it was an accident. We suffered oxygen failure on the Ark and had to do what we could to save ourselves. We will help you rebuild what we destroyed, and know that we mourn your dead with you."

"All we want is to get to Mount Weather," Kane says. "We won't infringe on your territory..."

He trails off at the sight of the look on the Trikru's faces. In her own chest, Clarke can feel her heart clenching with fear.

She turns to her mother. "Whatever you do, stay clear of Mount Weather!" she orders. "Promise me that!"

"What is your business with the Mountain?" Lexa says, her voice like steel.

"There are supplies there," Jaha says. "And a block of the prison cells broke away from the main ship and seems to landed somewhere around the foot of the mountain."

He glances at Clarke, whose fear is immediately replaced with anger at the thought of their negligence. "That's not the first time that happens," she reminds them coldly, remembering all to well the creaking sounds of the prison block breaking clear of its moorings, the freefall through endless black space, the jarring, destructive crash on Earth. "But prisoners aren't all that important, I suppose. Who where in that cellblock? _Who_?"

"Kids," her mother says. "Bellamy Blake. Finn Collins. Wells. I don't have the whole list. Fifteen of them in total."

"Fifteen," Clarke says, looking at Lexa.

"That's a lot of blood," Lexa says grimly.

"Lexa..." Clarke tries. The possibility here is to great to pass up on, and Lexa _must_ see that.

But Lexa shakes her head. Speaking in Trigedasleng, she says, "That will not happen."

"My enemy's enemy is my friend," Clarke says, also in Trigedasleng, garnering her odd looks from the Council. "If the Mountain has them..."

"How do you know your people would not rather ally themselves with the Mountain instead of us?" Lexa says.

"They do seem forged from the same metal," Anya cuts in, eying the Council and the guards with distrustful eyes, as if expecting an attack any second.

"Make sure our offer is the better one, and they will be your allies," Clarke says, and in response Lexa smiles, sad and grimly.

"The girl who fell here from the sky would have claimed they'd accept the offer out of the goodness of their hearts," Lexa says. She turns to Jaha and switches to English. "Out of respect for Clarke kom Skaikru, we will let you live. Leave these woodlands, our lands, for the deserts of the east and we will not hunt you down. Stay, and my army attacks with next dawn."

She turns to leave, with Anya, Layla and Gustus following at her heel, the guards stepping aside to give them passage.

Clarke rushes after, but waits until they are clear of the Ark before calling Lexa's name.

Lexa turns, indicating the others to keep walking. She remains where she is, waiting for Clarke to say what she has to stay with a steely glint in her eyes.

"What about me?" Clarke says finally. It's not what she was supposed to say, but it is what comes out.

"You have your people back," Lexa says, voice betraying nothing. "You are home."

"Four years," Clarke says, stepping closer. She doesn't know if it is fury or despair making her voice and hands shake. "Four years, I've shared your bed, your tent, your command. I love you. How can you just _turn_ from this?"

"My heart will always beat for you," Lexa says. The wind stirs her hair, sending a strand curling across her cheek, the only part of her not seeming cut from stone where she stands. She is so beautiful and so unattainable that Clarke aches with it. "But you know well enough that it is not my heart that rules the decisions I make."

And with that, she turns and walks back to her people, leaving Clarke standing immobile on the ash-strewn ground, her throat raw from the smoke-heavy wind and sudden, overwhelming grief.

 


	2. Chapter 2

It is easy, sneaking past the guards the Council has stationed around the Ark to protect against the Trikru and their own people running off into the the luring Earth night. Despite the all the horrors accompanying it, they are eager to celebrate their descent, the finding of an inhabitable ground.

Clarke has spent the last hours being questioned by the whole of the Council, her mother including, about her whereabouts these last five years, after her cellblock crashed to Earth. They want to know everything about her and her life, about Earth, about the Trikru. About Lexa.

Her mother and Kane wants to remain here and carve whatever agreement they can with the Trikru, while Jaha argues in favor of leaving.

"It's a death sentence," she tells him, trying for patient. "The desert's barren. If there's anything on the other side, you'll all die before you reach it."

"Something guided us down here," he insists. "Whatever kept us all from burning up on the way down and perish in space will lead us to some place we can make a home."

"Make a deal with Lexa," Clarke says, again and again. She is beginning to feel like a glitching audio player. "Listen to me," she insists when the whole Council begins to protest. "You say that other cellblock landed near Mount Weather. If Wells, Bellamy and the rest are still alive" - _please, let them be_ \- "they will, in all probability, have been captured by now."

Kane frowns. "Captured?"

"By whom?" Jaha asks.

"Mount Weather is full of supplies, that's true," Clarke says, trying to keep her voice even and the annoyance out of it. She's growing tired of talking, especially when there are so many things in need of doing. "Which is why a group of people made it their base during the nuclear wars hundred years ago. While the Trikru burned and sicked in radiation and was forced to evolve to survive, those select few remained barred inside their Mountain, safely away from the radioactive Earth."

"And now it's not a base anymore," Abby says, catching on. "It's become a prison."

"Less than a minute of breathing unfiltered, radiated air is lethal to them," Clarke says. "They have stayed alive through the help of an complicated air-purifying system, and.... and the blood of the Trikru."

"Blood...?" Jaha begins, face twisted into a grimace of disdain.

"Yes, of course," Abby says, quickly grappling with the information in her head, "if the Trikru are resistant towards radiation, regular transfusions of their blood would be able to keep these people alive and healthy, if they..." Sudden horror dawns on her face. "You mean they...?"

"Hang them up from the roof and bleed them dry?" Clarke says flatly. "Yes. And not just that - they have some kind of drug that turns men into rabid dogs. They capture our best warriors and make them hunt down their own."

She's slipped up, she realizes at her mother's sharp glance. She said 'our' instead of 'their'.

"That's what they'll do to our kids?" It's one of the guards that speaks up, his hands grasping tightly to the rifle in his hands. "My son is among them!" Seargant Miller, Clarke realizes after a moment. Nathan's dad. They have the same eyes.

"Let's not jump to conclusions," Kane says. "The Mountain and the... Trikru are in a conflict. What is to say they will treat us the same?"

"Why do you think the conflict started?" Clarke spits, suddenly enraged. If people would just _fucking listen_. She turns to Miller, but addresses the whole of the room. "You want to save your kids? See them safely home? Ally yourself with Lexa. She has gathered the largest Trikru army ever known to finally free these woods of the Mountain Men. With your help, our chances would be significantly higher Together, we end their reign of terror."

The guards have started to murmur among themselves and Clarke knows that word will soon spread throughout these space-mangled walls of the captured kids and the horrors inside the Mountain. It is not the council she will have to convince, in the end - it's the hearts of the Sky people.

"Why should we listen to you?" Kane breaks in, loudly. "I think you stopped being one of us the minute you went to bed with that savage!"

Clarke stills and the room falls silent, every eye back on her.

"What are you to her?" Kane continues.

Sending a quick glance in her mother's direction, Clarke, thinking it's better to get it over with, replies, "I'm her wife." She's not, not in the way it means on the Ark, but it's the most straightforward way to explain it, she supposes. "Do you see why you should listen to me? The Trikru don't trust me in the way they do Lexa, but I am their leader. They have accepted me. I can salvage this, if you would just let me."

"Clarke, honey..."

"No, Mom," Clarke says, looking straight at Abby. "I stopped being a child long ago. Long before I came to Earth." _You locked me up, all of you. You let me fall and gave me up_. "I refuse to be forced to chose between my people, but here I am a leader first and your daughter second."

She had left with that, head aching with frustration and lack of sleep. She had steered clear of everyone until evening, when she had slipped out with nightfall.

It would be a lot harder sneaking past the Trikru guards, so she doesn't. Instead, she simply walks into the camp hoping they don't have orders to keep her out.

They don't - she passes quickly through the camp, intent on Lexa's tent ( _their_ tent) when a moment to her left catches her attention. A figure is skulking between two tents, clearly trying to avoid being seen but doing a pretty miserable job of it.

Clarke pauses, hand going to the knife on her thigh just to be sure, and slips between the tents, reaching out to grab hold of the person, turning her around.

"Octavia!" she hisses in shock as she recognizes the girl.

"Clarke!" Octavia says, eyes wide. "You... We thought you were dead!"

"Well, I'm not," Clarke says simply, uninterested in explaining it all over again. "What are you doing here? Why aren't you at the Ark?"

Octavia shrugs. "I saw my chance and ran," she says. "I won't let them lock me up anymore. Have you seen these people?" she says, tone going from determined to awed in the blink of an eye. "Have you seen their _weapons_?"

"Yes, Octavia, I have," Clarke says dryly. "How did you get in here without anyone seeing you?"

"I didn't," Octavia says. "I tried, but some girl saw me. She let me pass, though."

Suddenly, she spreads her arms and makes a small pirouette, head thrown back to the sky. "Look at the stars, Clarke! Smell the air! We are on the ground!"

"Shh," Clarke says, but she's laughing quietly, all too well recognizing the elation Octavia feels right now. She had too, once the fear and the despair passed. And it must be a thousandfold stronger for Octavia, who has never even known the cramped freedom of the Ark, only that of a miniscule cell. "Look, O, you should get out of here. Return to the Ark. It isn't safe out here."

"What do you know about that?" Octavia asks. She makes a double-take at Clarke, just now taking the whole of her in; how much she's changed. "You're one of them now, aren't you?"

"Yes," Clarke says. "I am, in a way. But I need you to leave now. Please, just return to the crashsite. Okay?"

"But..."

"If they catch you here, they might kill you. They will lock you up, at the very least."

"And the Ark won't?" Octavia says, infuriated.

"Please," Clarke repeats.

"Is Bellamy there?" Octavia asks.

"No," Clarke says. "He might... he might be in danger. And if you wish to help him, go back to the Ark."

Even in the dark, Clarke can see the dark look Octavia gives her. "That's just foul, Griffin," she says, sounding just like she did when they were both girls locked up in juvie on the Ark. It's a bittersweet reminder.

"Octavia..."

"Fine," she huffs. Then she hauls Clarke in for a sudden, bone-crushing hug. "I'm glad you're alive," she says and then she leaves, trampling through the camp site as a small bear on a angry rampage.

  
  


Lexa is alone as Clarke sweeps into their tent, sprawling in a chair with her hands busy honing her blade. It's something she does to calm her mind, Clarke knows.

"Hey," she says, not knowing what else to begin with.

Lexa looks up at her. "Clarke," she says.

For years, Lexa has been Clarke's anchor point in this unknown world, the center around which Clarke's changing circumstances has ordered themselves. Lexa is a harsh woman, seldom given to sentimentality, about that Clarke has no illusions, but there is also such love and compassion to her, and ever since Clarke decided to trust her with her life, she has been her safe haven in this hard, uncertain world.

Gently, she takes the sword from Lexa and, putting it down on the table, steps between Lexa's legs, letting her hands rest against her waist. Lexa's hands goes to her shoulders, one curling around the back of her neck. It is familiar and comforting, the circle their bodies make, the weight of Lexa's hands against her skin.

Clarke rests her forehead against Lexa's. "Don't do this," she says. Pleads, almost. "Can't you see what I see? What we could do with their help?"

"I see a potentially formidable enemy weakened and unguarded - a bug ready to be squashed," Lexa says mercilessly. "I can finish this now, with little harm to my people, or risk fighting a war on two sides. A war, I fear, we will lose. Look what your people have done in the few hours they've been here, Clarke - wiped out an entire village in an _accident_. I fear that if I let them gather strength, I will not be able to harness it - instead, _we_ will be the ones that will end up squashed."

"I won't let that happen," Clarke says.

Lexa kisses her then, soft and lovingly. Despite it's sweetness, it leaves a bitter taste in Clarke's mouth. "Your loyalties are divided, my love," Lexa whispers. "And I won't force you to chose between me and your people."

With her insides suddenly gone cold from realization, Clarke backs away, out from the circle of Lexa's arms, away from her warmth. "You've been waiting for this, haven't you?" Her tone is accusing and she hopes it cuts Lexa deeply. "For me to leave? You're not letting me go, Lexa, if that's what you think - you're pushing me away."

"I adapt to the circumstances I'm presented with," Lexa says, turning away. "That is the nature of survival. That is the nature of _war_. And I've been at war since I was born, Clarke. Return to your people. Take them east. I have no wish to kill them."

"Sometimes," Clarke says, "you can be so fucking thick-headed, Lexa." With that she leaves, throwing the tent flap open to stalk out of the Trikru camp, anger and betrayal burning at her insides like putrid acid fog.

  
  


"Clarke!" Her mother catches her the moment she steps back into the Ark and for a second, Clarke thinks she's about to scold her for slipping out and that thought almost makes her laugh bitterly. But all Abby says is, "Come with me, please."

She leads Clarke into a control room where Raven Reyes is sitting at a table, frantically flicking the controls of a radio buzzing with white noise. "I lost the signal," she says through gritted teeth. "but I'm gonna get it back. Just watch me."

"Clarke," Abby says, "this is Raven, our most genius mechanic." She smiles and rests a hand on Raven's shoulder. Jealousy, as hot and ugly as it is sudden, pulses through Clarke. "A minute ago, she picked up a signal..."

"...llo?" the radio sputters out, interrupting Abby. "Hello?"

Raven sits up straighter. "Hey!" she says. "Bellamy, can you hear me? Over."

"I hear you," the voice replies and it's undoubtedly Bellamy. Clarke feels her face split into a grin, despite her foul mood, even as worry clenches at her heart.

"Bellamy!" she says, walking closer to the table. "Are you inside the Mountain? How are you able to communicate with us?" Her thoughts are swirling. It may be some sort of trickery, some strategy hurriedly composed by the Mountain Men to...

Silence. Then, "Clarke?"

"Yes," Clarke says impatiently. "We don't have time. Are you inside the Mountain?"

"No," Bellamy says. "But the rest of us are. Me, Roma and Monroe landed a bit away from the others. We watched as some red smoke knocked everyone unconscious and the next thing you know, these guys in green suits are hauling them away and into this mountain. Who are they?"

"The enemy," Clarke says flatly and Raven and Abby both look at her. "How did you get hold of the radio?"

"They sent out a second team, to search the ground, I suppose. They separated and we... we killed one. He had a gun, Clarke, and we didn't know what the fuck to do."

"That's okay, Bellamy," Clarke says. She's done worse. Will again, when she needs to. "As long as you are fine. Are any of you hurt?"

"A few scrapes and bruises. Roma twisted her wrist. We're okay. What's going on with that mountain?"

"Whatever you do, steer clear of it," Clarke orders him. "I will get the others out, whatever it takes."

"Bellamy," Abby says, reaching over to grab the radio from Clarke. "I want you and the girls to try and find your way back here. The smoke from the landing site is still rising - you should be able to navigate by it. When you're getting closer, contact us and we'll send a team out to retrieve you. You need to be back here before dawn, do you hear me?"

Again, there is a long while of silence. "Yeah," Bellamy finally says. "That's not going to happen, Dr. Griffin. I won't come back to get locked up again. None of us will. Especially not with our friends in danger."

"Listen..." Abby begins, but Clarke takes the radio back again.

"Stay safe," she says. "And keep in contact."

"Roger that, princess," Bellamy says and that makes Clarke smile again, remembering days long lost. Easier days, even though they didn't seem like it then.

The radio cuts out.

Clarke puts it down and looks up to meet her mother's gaze. As she watches, the disbelief at her daughter's act of insurrection gives way to something else, something that hardens the lines of her face.

"You may have spent the last years down here playing queen of the forest," Abby says slowly, coldly, "but now you will have to allow those actually in charge to make the decisions, Clarke."

Clarke tilts her chin up, a gesture she has acquired from Lexa. The thought stings; she turns quickly from it. "I am," she says and leaves the room.

  
  


She finds her way outside again. The broken Ark seems stifling to her, an unreal and monstrous labyrinth of steel and glass. Despite the chill bite to the wind and the glum air, tainted greyish by the dispersing smoke, she can breathe more easily under the open sky.

"It's hard for her, you know," Raven's voice comes from behind her.

Clarke startles; she hadn't noticed the steps behind her. She gives a quick, uneasy shake of her head - she needs sleep. But she thinks of going to bed in the Ark, perhaps in the very same room where she slept as a girl, far from the bed she's shared with Lexa for years, and something inside of her lurches at the thought. It would feel too much like a defeat.

 _I'm turning into Lexa_ , she thinks.

"She thought you were dead," Raven says, continuing despite Clarke's lack of reply. "Everyone did. No one has survived an Arkfall before. Well, that we know of, I suppose." She steps up beside Clarke, looks out across the darkened landscape. Not much is visible in the light of the half-moon, save the pin-pricks of light from the Trikru camp. "This is a whole new deal, down here."

"It is," Clarke agrees without looking away from the torches, penetrating the night like reddish stars. She isn't quite sure how to tread this ground, between Raven and herself. She doesn't know what Raven knows, of what happened between Clarke and Finn when they were both in prison on the Ark.

As if she's reading Clarke's mind, Raven says, "Finn is there. Trapped in that mountain."

"Yes," Clarke says, fear again wrapping its icy hand around her heart at the thought of the Mountain, of her friends in fatal danger therein.

"It's been a while since I was allowed to visit him," Raven says. She sighs wistfully. "He used to talk about you a lot," she says then. "He missed you, I think. Said that he used to help you to take care of the others. Help you and Bellamy." She turns to Clarke, a small smile on her lips. "He admired you, Clarke, for what you did in there. And I'm glad he had a friend in you."

Shame burns inside of Clarke. She looks down, away from Raven, and her eyes catch on the pendant hanging from her neck. When she found out that Finn had a girlfriend, she had thrown away the deer he folded for her, a picture straight out of the Earth-tales Clarke loved reading. But Raven has kept hers, she sees, the little raven happily swinging on its chain right next to her heart.

She doesn't know.

"We'll get them out of there," Clarke says. "We'll get them home. All of them." Her voice is like iron, as if daring the coming days to contradict her.

"Yeah," Raven says, her tone just as steadfast. "Anything you need, just let me know, okay?"

Clarke nods.

Raven leaves her, stepping back into the Ark, but not before her hand has darted out to hastily but firmly press Clarke's.

  
  


Dawn brims crimson on the horizon, and Octavia is beginning to regret her decision to leave the camp and set out for her trek into the woods, destination unknown. The forest is deep and dense and after hours of walking she is forced to finally admit that she is hopelessly lost. Has been almost since she stepped in among the tall trees, in fact.

Her feet ache dully and her whole body seems heavy with fatigue. Her stomach growls from lack of food and the scrape she sustained across her arm during the fall stings. But still, when she looks up at the pale sky, peeping through among the dark tree tops, her whole being seems to rejoice with it, her spirits rising along with the sun. The trees, clad in orange and yellowing leaves, seems to burn in its light.

It's beautiful.

Pulling a deep breath into her lungs, she forces herself to keep moving. She doesn't dare try any of the berries or mushrooms she finds for fear of poison, but if she finds clear water, she'll at least be able to slake her thirst.

She tramples on, the satchel filled with supplies she managed to scavenge from the Ark before taking off bumping against her back with every step. She won't starve, not for a few days if she rations her food as best as she'll able, but after that she'll have to live off what nature provides or die.

There are worse things, she supposes, hitching the satchel higher on her shoulder. She could have died on the Ark, still trapped. Down here, she'll die looking up at the sky, at least.

The thought has barely crossed through her mind before she stumbles on a root embedded in the ground right across across the path and falls, her ankle twisting viciously beneath her. She gasps from pain, and when she tries to rise back up, her leg gives out, her damaged ankle too painful too hold her.

Falling back against the soft moss, she feels despair steal over her, heavy and encompassing. She'll have to return and be locked up, in some way or other, or die here, on the cold ground with her ankle blazing with agony.

She gasps again as something dark moves in the corner of her eye and twists, catching sight of a man moving out of the bushes and straight for her. Valiantly, she gives another attempt at getting to her feet, but all she manages is to prop herself up against a tree, her leg bent at the knee to keep her foot off the ground.

"Don't be scared," the guy says, in English.

Octavia stares. He's clearly one of them – the Trikru \- with his motley clothing and streaks of face paint. He carries a sword strapped to his back, it's handle sticking up over his shoulder, and a horn in his belt.

"Here, I'll help you," he says, coming to her side to help hold her up. "I am Lincoln kom Trigedakru."

"Octavia," she says, eying him dubiously for a second, before deciding to trust him. Hell, what other choice does she have at this point? "Have you been following me?" she asks, even as she gingerly leans against his broad shoulder.

"For a little while," he says. "I was curious. You're one of them," he adds. "The sky people."

"Won't you get in trouble," Octavia asks, wincing as she rights herself and accidentally shifts her ankle, "for running away from your leader's big ass army?"

"I'm not part of this offensive," he says. " _My_ leader sent me out as a scout, to find out what's happened and what the Commander is planning. Come on," he says, tugging carefully at her with the arm he has looped around her waist. "I know a safe place just a short walk from here."

Tightening her grip on his shoulder to let him take most of her weight, she limps forward slowly, expectation, with just the barest hint of fear, spiraling in her gut.

  
  


"Clarke. Clarke!"

"Huh?" Clarke lifts her head from the paper she's been doodling on, too exhausted to focus on anything but sprawling, nonsense lines. The vibrant chaos seems to mirror the mess that is her mind going on its third day without any sleep. She will need rest, and soon. As soon as she's sure disaster won't strike the moment she's not there to stop it.

"Clarke." Raven's hand is soft but insistent on her shoulder. "It's Bellamy. I need you at the radio."

That and the graveness of Raven's tone gives her the surge of panicked energy she needs to hoist herself from the floor in the small nook she's found herself and hurry after Raven to the comm room.

"There's something funny with the signal," Raven is saying as they walk. "It only gets through every now and then. Bellamy's been trying to reach us for a while, but couldn't get through until now."

"Is the line encrypted?" Clarke asks, only now coming to think on it. If they're using the Mountain's frequency and they pick up on what they've been communicating...

"Don't worry," Raven says, sending Clarke a look across her shoulders. "They won't hear anything but static. Trust me, I know what I'm doing."

"I know," Clarke says. "Did you tell anyone else about this?"

Raven shakes her head. "Abby was asleep, so I came to you first."

"Good," Clarke says as they step into the com room. Raven hands her the radio and Clarke grasps it tightly in her clammy palm.

"Bellamy?"

The radio crackles. "Clarke?"

"Yeah, I'm here. Has something happened? Are you alright?"

"We're okay," Bellamy says, "but the door in the mountain opened a while back and let out a group of those men in blue suits again. They were heavily armed and aimed for what I think is the crashsite, judging from the smoke."

Fuck it. "How many?"

"Four."

She exhales in relief. "Scouts," she says. That they'll handle, if it has to come to that. "How long ago did they leave?"

"I'm not quite sure," Bellamy says. "Monroe says about eight hours, judging by the stars and that's probably about right."

"Shit," Clarke swears. Eight hours. Chances are they're already here, hiding in the woods. "Okay, I need to handle this. Stay safe and don't do anything stupid, you hear me?"

"Take care, princess," is all Bellamy says, a hint of laughter in his voice, before the radio cuts out.

Clarke puts it down and rushes out of the room, ignoring Raven calling her name, and out of the Ark.

She blinks in the cold light of morning and stops dead as she catches sight of the council standing at the edge of the crashsite, looking out across the Trikru army. They are moving, not charging, not yet, but readying themselves to.

Clarke swerves to the left, in among the trees, to stay out of their sight, not trusting that they would let her go without a lengthy discussion. One she doesn't have time for - she needs to warn Lexa that there are Mountain men moving in the woods.

Lexa should be ready for it, of course, and Clarke knows that, but she simply can't leave it to chance, so she pushes on through the woods, pressing her tired body forward, her knife slipped loose from her belt and into to her hand in case of danger.

It's not enough - one moment the edge of the forest is in front of her, the Trikru camp just beyond, and with the next, she stumbles, agony searing sharp and sudden through her side.

On sheer reflex, she turns around, grunting in pain as the movement tugs at whatever damage she has sustained, and lets the knife whip from her hand. It catches dully in the throat of one of the blue-clad men, sending him stumbling to his knees, fingers clutching weakly at the handle.

The other three bring up their guns to point at her, surrounding her, and Clarke clenches her fists, unwilling to give them her surrender. They know who she is, of course, and she curses herself for being stupid enough to venture out alone, just handing them one of Lexa's biggest weakness on a fucking platter. Her only option is getting them to kill her - she won't allow herself to be taken prisoner, to force Lexa to make the choice to let her die to save her people.

They seem almost locked in the moment, the four of them there, all waiting to see what the other will do, and just as Clarke readies herself for her final fruitless attack, a war cry rips loudly through the forest.

The men turn, but too late - an arrow pierces through the visor of one of them, another through his breathing tube. He screams, panicked, as the polluted air seeps in through the cracks in the glass, poisoning him.

Chaos ensues. Clarke falls down to the ground, suddenly overwhelmed by the wound in her side, seeming to drain her of power with each drip of thick, bright blood. The sound of bullets being fired and catching in the trees echoes throughout the forest, accompanied by the dying man's screams.

She sees Tris sidestep the muzzle of one gun to swipe at the man's leg, but he jumps away and fires another shot, forcing her to duck. Anya is engaged with the fourth man, yelling at Gwain to move away from the line of his fire. Something else is moving at the corner of Clarke's eye, but her vision seems to be going black at the edges and she blinks in a desperate attempt to clear it.

Anya stabs her sword through the chest of the man she's fighting while Tris and Gwain descend on the other one with combined efforts. Clarke breathes out and almost lets herself slip under, to follow that alluring blankness in her mind, when another shot rings out, followed by eerie stillness.

Clarke forces her eyes open again and watches as Anya crumbles to the ground, blood spreading over the front of her armour like some ugly, morbid flower.

Perhaps she does lose consciousness for a second, because the next thing she knows Lexa is bending over her, hands going to the wound in Clarke's side and coming away red with blood.

"Clarke," she says, but her voice seems to come from very far away. Around them, Clarke hears rapid talk in Trigedasleng, but she can't decipher the words. Her head aches, the darkness beckoning.

"Anya," she mumbles, but hears no sound. She tries again. "Anya..."

"The bullet's caught inside her," Lexa says, voice laced with pain and worry. "She won't make it, but you will, you hear me? Stay with me, Clarke. _Stay with me_."

Weakly, Clarke reaches up to grab at Lexa, catching the strap to her shoulderguard. "Take her to Mom," she says. "Lexa, promise me. Take her to Abby. Abby will help her. Take her to the Ark..." But she's slipping away again, no matter how desperately she's grasping for consciousness. "Abby," she says again and then she feels Lexa gently loosen her grasp on her, curling Clarke's hand into her own palm, and then darkness claims her, pulling her down into its depths.

 


	3. Chapter 3

It isn't easy, waking up. The darkness clings to her, slippery and heavy, eager to keep its grip on her. But she struggles slowly to the surface until she is finally able open her eyes. Only to immediately squeeze them shut again, finding the cold, glaring light of the sickbay too much for them.

Around her, she hears the sound of machines beeping and people moving as they work, a faint murmur of soft voices and an occasional grunt of pain. It's so familiar to her she aches with it, even though she hasn't been here for years.

The last time has been just before her eighteenth birthday when a persistent flu had circulated on the Ark and her mother had had her and the other sick prisoners temporarily released in order to see them properly treated. Clarke had spent those few days swimming in fever and nausea, and, still, what she first and foremost associates the sickbay with is not illness, but her mother's firm, sure hands and her soft calming voice. The feeling of being safe, and cared for.

It was only two months later that she fell to Earth.

She opens her eyes again and this time, the artificial light seems less hard on her. She blinks up against the ceiling for a second, her mind blank, before everything comes flooding back. The Mountain men, her mad dash through the woods, the fight. Unbidden, her fingers find her side and the stitches there, intersecting her skin. She sits up, the movement tugging uncomfortably at the IV in her arm and she grimaces even as her fingers move to pull it out.

Lexa's hand intercepts her, curls around her wrist to hold her still. "Your mother said you needed that," she says and her voice sound slightly hoarse. Her eyes look tired and strained with worry.

"Anya?" Clarke asks, remembering the sound of the gunshot, too loud, and Anya dropping to the ground. "Is she alive?"

Lexa nods towards the corner of the room and Clarke turns and sees Anya unconscious on one of the other beds, eerily still and with a sickly gray pallor to her skin, but with her heartbeat monitor beeping soft and evenly.

"According to your mother, she will live," Lexa says. "She will need a lot of recuperating, but she'll live."

Clarke falls back against the pillows, squeezing Lexa's hand. She knows what Anya means to her, how badly she handles seeing anyone she loves hurt. It's one of the few things Lexa can't handle, can't charge at head on.

Having offered her what comfort she can, she drops Lexa's hand. "So you haven't attacked yet, huh," she says. She may be safe from the wound in her flesh, stitched tightly together, but there is something else festering inside of her and it won't be so easily contained.

Lexa doesn't flinch, but she blinks, startled and hurt. "Clarke," she says in a hollow voice, "you know who I am." There is no defiance in her words or demeanor; she just seems tired. Well, that makes two of them.

"Yes," Clarke says. "I do. The problem is, Lexa, I've started to doubt that you really know who _I_ am."

"You are angry because I gave you leave to return to your people," Lexa says.

Clarke inhales sharply and exhales slowly, trying to stem the new wave of anger rising inside. "I am angry about a lot of things," she says through clenched teeth, "not in the least that small detail where you wanted to wipe my people out, but what makes me _furious_ is you thinking you know me better than I know myself." She should stop there, she knows, but she doesn't. She can't; the words want out and she lets them. "Being commander has made a fucking martyr out of you, Lexa. It seems like self-sacrifice is all you're capable of."

Ignoring the tug in her side, she turns her back on her wife. After a moment, she hears the clink and ruffle of Lexa's clothing as she gets up and leaves.

  
  


For Abby Griffin, it feels as if the last decade of her life has been an endless, nauseating fall through deep space, with her spinning faster and faster towards certain doom while desperately trying to grasp for whatever she can to at least slow her momentum down. It seems as if she hasn't done much else besides trying to rebuild her world over and over, after catastrophe after catastrophe - the execution of John, Clarke's imprisonment, Clarke's fall to Earth.

Seeing her daughter again, alive and well, had been like an electric shock to her entire system, just as painful and exhilarating as the day Clarke was born. _Perhaps_ , she had thought as she saw her daughter walking towards her, _I have finally stopped falling_. But seeing her daughter's lifeless body, prone and pale, in Lexa's arms as the Commander carried her into the sick-bay, barking orders all the way and almost as deathly white beneath her warpaint and the streak of red across her cheek as Clarke, had been another lurch.

Clarke had been okay, though, unconscious more due to exhaustion and dehydration than the shallow wound in her side. Ignoring every instinct screaming to her to see to her daughter, Abby had called Rose over to take care of Clarke before turning her attention to the other wounded woman. Anya, who had ridden here to claim vengeance for her own dead by killing them all. Anya, who Clarke had called a friend.

Abby had worked quick and hard, her hands steady even with her insides in turmoil with worry for Clarke, with what would happen if she failed, if Anya died on her operation table, as the sun rose outside. Dawn was long since passed when she finally went outside to where Lexa was pacing, torn between the two wounded, and told her Anya would live.

She is shaken from her bleak thought by a soft beep on her tablet that alerts her to the fact that her daughter is awake and as fast as she is able, she leaves the Council room for the sick-bay.

The sound of Clarke's voice, barbed with anger, reaches her and she cannot help but pause to listen.

"...what makes me _furious_ is you thinking you know me better than I know myself." She hears Clarke pulling in a sharp breath before continuing, "Being commander has made a fucking martyr out of you, Lexa. It seems like self-sacrifice is all you're capable of."

Abby barely has time to step aside from the door before Lexa is marching past her, hand clenched around the handle of her sword, her face set in a murderous scowl.

Warily, she steps into the sickroom, only to find Clarke crying angry tears, wiping impatiently at her face with the back of her hand.

"Oh, honey," Abby says, falling to her knees beside the bed and taking Clarke's hand in hers. If this has been a shock to _her_ system, she can only imagine what it must be like for Clarke, deserted down here for all these years and all of a sudden reunited with her people again under such horrible circumstances.

She leans in to kiss Clarke's forehead and Clarke cries harder.

"I wanted to save you," Clarke says between sobs. "All of you. And I lost her."

Abby doesn't actually know Lexa. From what she's seen so far, she doesn't like her. Her gut's telling her not to trust her. But her daughter does, has married this woman, and is breaking to bits for fear of having lost her.

Gently stroking the hair from Clarke's forehead, she says, "She didn't leave your side for a second, except to go and check up on Anya. She's still yours, I assure you." _If you truly want her, though I can't see why_ , she adds to herself.

Clarke wipes her nose with the back of her hand, the childish gesture going straight to Abby's heart. She can't get over how strange she seems, this creature that undoubtedly is her daughter and at the same time so very changed, her skin dotted with scars and ink and with a steeliness in her eyes that was never there before. Not even after Jake.

She hands Clarke a tissue and she dries her eyes and face.

"You hate seeing me like this, don't you?" Clarke says. "What I have become. Me and Lexa."

"I..." Abby swallows, hesitates - she doesn't want to lie. "I'm glad you had someone," she settles on finally. "I'm glad she was there for you. That you found a... home." It is the truth, but her ambivalence must shine through, because Clarke sighs.

"They're not what you think them to be, Mom," she says.

She has no wish to start a fight. She kisses Clarke's forehead again, suddenly and viciously wishing that they could go back, to when Clarke was a little child, small enough to easily fit into her arms. "I want you to stay here the rest of the day," she says. "Gather your strength. Can you do that for me?"

"I suppose," Clarke says, making a face and looking like she's twelve again. Abby's heart swells almost painfully in her chest. _Whatever happens, I'll protect you_ , she thinks.

"Good girl," she says, stroking her hand gently through Clarke's hair one last time before standing up. "I need to head back to the council. Just send someone for me if you need me, okay?"

Clarke nods.

  
  


Anya is no stranger to pain, but the agony that has her chest in its iron claws is something out of this world, signaling an injury she should not have survived.

It takes a long moment before she has gathered enough strength to heave herself up, tearing out the wires and needles hooking her up to the surrounding machines as she goes. She checks the bandage wrapped around her torso - it's still white and pristine, meaning the wound hasn't opened. Seeing no one around to attempt to stop her, she slips out of the room and into a wide corridor. The lights are dimmed, reflecting dully against the oppressive steel walls. Its probably nighttime, which would account for the lack of people moving through the ship.

Lexa's caution might be completely misplaced, she thinks, if the Skaikru are stupid enough to risk an enemy roaming free within the heart of their base. She won't sit that opportunity up.

The thought has barely passed through her mind before she hears steps and laughter, seemingly heading her way. As quickly as she's able, she limps forward until she finds and unlocked door and slips inside, closing it firmly and leaning against it to pull in a rough breath, overwhelmed by her sudden weakness. Their medicine may be advanced, but hardly miraculous. Anya is torn between relief and disappointment.

"Hello?"

She whips around, face in a snarl and her hands grasping ineffectually for a weapon, finding only the cool steel of the locked door behind her.

The dark-haired girl sitting at a table full of mechanic parts is looking curiously at her. "You're that Trikru woman, aren't you?" she says, not unpleasantly. "Did you escape the sickbay? I'd done the same. I won't tell, I promise. Do you want to sit?"

Anya does not, but she has no choice. Her body is depleted of what little strength it regained during her unconsciousness and she more collapses than sits down into the chair in front of the girl.

"I'm Raven," she says with a wide smile, carelessly fiddling with some complicated contraption as she speaks. "Superb mechanic."

"Anya kom Trikru," Anya mutters.

"Nice to meet you," Raven says. "Do you..." But whatever she was planning to say is interrupted by a loud crackling coming from one of the devices on the table. With a swift movement, she snatches it up and speaks into it. "Bellamy? Is everything alright?"

More crackling. "-es, we're okay, all of us. Just checking in," a voice says. "Everything seems calm and, uh, is Abby there?"

Raven's eyes flick to Anya for a second. "No," she says.

"Good. Listen, we think we have found an entrance to the Mountain. Tunnels going below it."

"You have people at the Mountain?" Anya lets out before she can stop herself.

"...Who's that?" comes from the device in Raven's hand.

"Anya," Raven says. "A Trikru woman who was hurt in the Mountain men attack and needed our help."

"Does she know anything about these tunnels?"

Raven looks at Anya for a long second before handing the device over. "Just press that button there and talk," she says.

"Among my people we say that there is no escape from the Mountain," Anya says, feeling marginally silly about speaking into a plastic contraption. "But I entered one of those tunnels once, after my first second was taken. I didn't get too far before I had to turn back, though."

She grimaces a the memory; in the heat of the moment, she had been furious enough to rush into the Mountain with the intention of reclaiming Wera or dying in the attempt. She hadn't gotten far before realizing the extent of her selfishness: her second may be lost, but her people were still out there, alive and in need of her. She had turned back and only marginally slipped past the Reapers sent out to hunt.

"Release the button when you're done talking," Raven says, thankfully interrupting her recollection.

Anya does.

Crackling. Then, "Do you know how to use the tunnels to get inside?"

For several long seconds, Anya hesitates. Then she pushes the button down with her thumb. "Both our people are in there. If you promise to do what you can for mine, as you'll do for yours, I will help you."

There is no pause. She lets up the button and Bellamy says, "Yes. Raven?"

"I'm in," she says. "Just, whatever you need," she adds, to Anya.

Anya pushes the button down again and leans in to tell them everything they'll have use for. They'll die, of course. There is no way a couple of Skaikru kids will be able to take on the Mountain and live, much less get anyone else out. But they'll prove a handy distraction, an opportunity to catch the Mountain off guard, if nothing else.

**HÄR**

Morning is signaled by a breakfast tray, brought in by one of the guards drafted into round duty, that Clarke pushes aside without even tasting the food. Earth may be hell, but at least the food is a lot better than the nutrients-filled slob that has been sustaining the people on the Ark for the past hundred years.

She takes the bottle of water, though, and finishes it in four deep gulps. She puts it back on the tray, deliberately stretching a little further than she actually needs to get a feel of her healing body. She's a bit sore, but the pain is faint - more of a dull ache than anything else.

She should really get out of bed, she knows. Heaven knows what kind of catastrophes in need of solving that may already have transpired while she was asleep. But she can't. There is a tiredness inside of her, like lead in her bones, weighing her down into the bedding.

A heavy sense of exhaustion and hopelessness is washing over her - suddenly she's _done_. Done with Lexa, done with her mother, done with this whole fucking horror show of a world that may burn down to bits for all that she cares. It feels like she's been fighting a fight she cannot win half her life and she's getting tired.

She struggles to instill some sense of purpose in the deep gloom of apathy that's settled over her, but all she can come up with his her father's face, her mother's safe, sure hands, the feeling of being nestled in Lexa's arms in their bed, and all those things just fill her with inexplicable grief.

She stares unseeingly up at the ceiling, trying to breathe through it, feeling as if everything she's held at bay for the past years are suddenly catching up, fast and quick, dragging her to the ground.

  
  


The Trikru camp seems calm as Abby steps across the perimeter, the invisible get very tangible line separating their small scrap of scavanged land from Lexa's territory. Most of the Trikru, armoured up and with their weapons within easy reach, send glances her way - some of them curious, most suspicious - but does nothing to stop her.

The Commander's tent isn't difficult to find - it is the largest one and situated right in the middle of the camp. Outside are two guards stationed and to Abby's surprise, they let her inside without so much as a word, the woman on the right even nodding to her as she passes.

Inside, Lexa and what Abby assumes is her war council or her closest advisers are gathered around a large table strewn with maps. They all fall silent as Abby steps inside and she catches more than one hand twitching toward a weapon, but Lexa stays them with a quick gesture of her hand.

Her face is washed clean of make-up and she has gotten rid of her mantle and shoulder-guard, making her suddenly seem her age - a young woman with too heavy a weight on her shoulders and rage in her eyes.

"Could I speak to you alone, Commander?" Abby asks, looking nowhere but at Lexa even as the other Trikru warriors shift menacingly her at her words.

Lexa offers her a curt nod in response and gives an order in her own language. There is some dissent and one of the guards have to come inside to pat Abby down for weapons at someone's insistence, but eventually the others trail out, one by one, leaving Lexa and her alone.

"I am not here on behalf of the Council," Abby begins, but Lexa interrupts her.

"You are here because the two of us have become bound by blood and circumstance," Lexa says, leaning forward with her hands braced on the table. "You are Clarke's mother and you saved Anya's life. If not for that, you would not have been standing there now."

"You expected me, did you?" Abby says. She wonders how politically savvy Lexa truly is. That she is a brute Abby doesn't doubt, despite her young years, but the question is if she is able to rule beyond the threat of violence and destruction. Is she anything without a sharp-edged sword and an army of thousands backing her word and will? _Is she anything without my daughter's intelligence backing her up, as she's done the past four years_?

Lexa says nothing, but gives her a pointed look.

Abby knows what it means. Yesterday night, the only reason she was able to step away from Clarke's side to help Anya was because Lexa was there. Not because she thought saving Anya was a good thing to have and hold over the Trikru, not because of the oath she took when she became a doctor, but because Lexa was there, by Clarke's side, and Abby could be sure she would see to Clarke's safety in her own absence. She doesn't trust Lexa with Clarke's heart, not for a moment, not someone as cold and ruthless as she, but she does trust her with her life.

And Lexa knows that, because somehow some of that passed between them when Abby looked back one final time before stepping into the operation room and caught Lexa's gaze instead of the sight of her daughter's pale, blood-stained face.

"I don't really trust you," Abby says, "but it does appear as if we do have a common goal and a common enemy, just like Clarke said. If we had simply joined forces to begin with, Clarke and Anya might never have been hurt at all."

"Perhaps not," Lexa says, "but others of my people would have. The events of these past days, though dire, is not cataclysmic, for us. They're nothing out of the ordinary. This is life down here, Abby Griffin. This is what we have been living like for a hundred years, with you up in your box in the sky, looking down on the view. The stakes are high for us. This final conflict between us and the Mountain men can mean the difference between the Trikru's survival and extinction. I won't risk being betrayed by you and your kind."

"We have had confirmation that our kids are in fact captured by the Mountain Men," Abby says. If she wants Lexa's help, she will have to offer her something, some sort of guarantee in return, "They were dosed with something and carried inside. We can't know for sure what will happen with them in there, but we want them back." After a moments hesitation, she quickly adds, "The knowledge of this has spread, among the people. They're getting angry, and if the council doesn't take measure to save those kids - and quickly - we will soon have an insurrection on our hands."

At that Lexa smiles tightly, more a show of teeth than anything else. "Just like Clarke wanted," she says and there is a fondness in her tone that Abby resents. "You shouldn't underestimate your daughter, Abby."

"Don't," Abby snaps. That's one weak spot she simply won't allow Lexa to push at. "Perhaps you should take a look at yourself before lecturing me on how I behave toward Clarke."

That wipes Lexa's smirk clean of her face and Abby feels a brief moment of satisfaction. Sensing victory, she pushes forward. "Without this alliance, you will probably lose her."

Entirely wrong thing to say, Abby realizes the moment the words are out of her mouth and Lexa's face turns to stone again.

"I will consider what you've said," the Commander says coldly. "You will receive a reply by nightfall. Go."

It isn't a complete defeat, Abby reminds herself as she strides back to the Ark. There is still a chance.

The hallways of the Ark are eerily silent, people trailing off midword as she passes them. Abby has been on the council for years and she's hardly a stranger to the social stigma it can sometimes entail, but this is different. The air seems ripe with tension, ready to explode at any second, with sufficient enough a spark. A spark Abby will make sure they won't get.

She hurries through the doors to the meeting room, finding her harried colleagues caught up in a loud, intense discussion.

"What's happened?" she asks.

Kane looks up at her, his mouth set in a thin line. "The Trikru woman you treated. She's missing from the sickbay. If this comes out..."

"All hell will break loose," Abby fills in for him. _Dammit_. She takes a deep breath, "We may be able to work out a solution. I just came back from speaking with the Commander..."

Every face in the room turns to look at her.

"What?" Kane says.

"If we can form an alliance..." Abby begins, but Jaha interrupts her.

"What we should do, is go collect our kids and leave this cursed land," he says. "We will start anew beyond the desert, away from all this madness."

"Perhaps he has a point," Kane says with a sigh, raking his hand through his hair. Others are nodding in consent. They are getting frayed, all of them.

"'Collect our kids'?" Abby can't help but scoff. "Have you heard nothing of what Clarke's told us about that Mountain?"

"Well, yeah," Kane says, "but if we went over there to negotiate..."

" _Negotiate_?" Abby says, voice raised. "One of them _sliced my daughter open_. They've kidnapped our kids, to use for heaven knows what purpose! I say we join forces with the Trikru and get them back as quickly as we can!"

"We can't trust them!" Kane argues.

Abby forces down the urge to scoff again. "But negotiations with the Mountain men sound like a reasonable idea?"

"Abby, we understand how you feel about your daughter," Jaha says gently. "But she is safe, while our kids are on the line. How can we know we can even trust Clarke? She doesn't have the best track record to begin with."

"She's married to one of them, for god's sake!" Kane says. "And since Ark law still applies down here, she really should be in jail!"

 _You're welcome to try and imprison her again_ , Abby thinks, but she keeps a lid on her anger. "All right," she says instead, looking back and forth between them. "I think it's clear what the options are. Let's put it to a vote, shall we?"

"Sure," Jaha agrees easily.

"Absolutely," Kane says.

"I mean, put it to a public vote," Abby says.

  
  


There was a time when Lexa was careless enough to think that there were no conflict between being in charge and being in love. Eventually, life schooled her differently. Costia's death ripped her open, turned her mad. She learned what love can cause, what a weakness it is, and vowed to never put anyone at risk again. Not her people. Not a lover. Not herself.

And then Clarke Griffin fell from the sky.

Lexa always knew from the beginning that Clarke wouldn't be hers forever. She knew, from the way she used to stare up at the sky with longing in her eyes and grief in her heart, that she would never be satisfied here, parted from her people, from her sky. And she had seemed almost like a dream to begin with, a girl fallen from the sky for Lexa to fall in love with, like something out of an Old Earth tale. And everyone knows that tales and dreams inevitably end.

Another thing she has always known is that if the Skaikru ever would become a threat with their technology, their weaponry, their medicine - so very like the Mountain men's - she would never allow her feelings for Clarke to sway her toward the merciful solution. She loves Clarke with her entire being, but she would never put her in front of the need or safety of her people.

But perhaps her fear of letting her love for Clarke make her soft has had her blindsided instead. The war in front of them will be a great and terrible one and the Trikru will need any edge she can get on the Mountain in order to win. The Skaikru might give them that.

Or they may kill them all. Entering into an alliance would mean revealing enough of their secrets, of their weaknesses and defenses, for the Skaikru to gain the upper hand once the Mountain is defeated. An alliance built on sheer necessity in the middle of the upstart of a war isn't one that is likely to last long beyond the battlefield.

But there's Clarke, after all. Caught in the middle. Not enough of a guarantee, not even close, but perhaps all they've got.

"Leyla!" she barks towards the opening of her tent, springing into action before she has time to change her mind. "Get me a courier. I have a message for Abby Griffin."

 


	4. Chapter 4

They have all gathered in Lexa's tent; Lexa with her generals on one side of the great table and Clarke and the Sky people on the other. Anya and Raven is sitting off on one side, Raven fiddling with the radio in case Bellamy needs to contact them and Anya leaning heavily against the back of her chair, her wound clearly paining her.

The war council hasn't even begun, but the air is already fraught with tension. The Skaikru council is furious at Anya for slipping away from her sickbed only to send Bellamy into the Mountain and there seems to be some inward dissent as well, from what Clarke can tell. Most of them doesn't like that Abby forced their hand with a public vote.

The vote fell out in favour of the alliance by four votes. There was two recounts, but eventually the council had to stand by the verdict and accept it.

Lexa takes a step forward and lets her gaze row across the Skaikru standing in front of her. "We have our differences," she begins, her voice clear and carrying strongly throughout the room. "There is bad blood between us, I think we all can admit, but we are joined together by our hunger for justice. With our numbers and knowledge of the land coupled with Skaikru technology, we will see the Mountain men brought to their knees. But in order to make that happen, we need to collaborate and devise a strategy through which to do that."

"Thanks to Raven and Anya and some sheer luck, we have an inside man," Clarke says, taking up the thread when Lexa's speech is done. Where Lexa has always been able to rouse people to action by passionate speeches, Clarke has always been the one to go straight on to the practical details. "Monroe and Roma have volunteered to let themselves be captured and do what they can to act as a distraction to give Bellamy every chance he can of avoiding detection." She swallows, remembering the two girls she knew back in Ark prison; Monroe always calm and steadfast and Roma who had the ability to brighten up even the darkest of days. "As of now, we have no way of contacting them - out of necessity, Bellamy has the radio."

Lexa nods.

Clarke barrels on - she had to fight hard to be allowed to be in charge of this meeting and she can feel the impatience of the council at her back, itching to take over. "Bellamy's imperative is twofold: firstly, to provide us with a working knowledge of the inside of the Mountain - schematics, power systems, weaponry, anything that can be of worth and will give us a way to get in - and secondly, to dismantle the acid fog."

"We have an important informant, in other words," Lexa continues. "What we need is a plan of attack."

"We have an army," Gwain says, stepping forward to be heard properly. "Let's use it."

"Agreed," Quint mutters surly, his thick arms crossed over his chest.

Clarke has to force down the urge to roll her eyes at them. Ever the first ones to eagerly rush blindly into a fight.

"The number of our soldiers is completely irrelevant if we can't get to the enemy," Clarke reminds them, not for the first time. If Gwain and Quint had had they way, their entire army would lie slaughtered at the foot of the Mountain months ago.

Quint turns his face away, muttering something under his breath that Clarke chooses to ignore.

"That's enough," Lexa says, her voice easily cutting through the murmured discussions spreading throughout the tent. "Let's all take a break. We'll continue this discussion when everyone has had a chance to clear their heads."

No one offers up any disagreement. Without pausing or waiting to see if anyone wants her anything, Clarke stalks out of the tent and into the edge of the forest, careful to keep close enough to the camp so that the guards can still glimpse her through the treeline. Just in case there are Mountain men out there, she'll avoid taking any unnecessary risks.

She hopes the rest of the negotiations won't be like this - a group of grumpy children squabbling and Lexa ordering breaks every five minutes to prevent any verbal fights from breaking out. She leans against a thickset tree trunk with a sigh. They need this to work.

She does catch the sound of steps coming up behind her, but doesn't react to it, allows Lexa come close enough to put a hesitant hand on her shoulder.

"Are you all right?" she asks and Clarke whirls on her.

"Why?" she says nastily. "Are you worried I'm not strong enough to go through with this? Afraid I'll blow the whole operation with because of emotional weakness?"

Lexa opens her mouth to reply, before pulling in a deep breath and biting her lip. "I deserved that," she says. "I was wrong," she continues after a short pause pause. "You were right - the Skaikru might be beneficial to our cause."

Clarke scoffs, shaking her head. She knows that for Lexa, admitting even that is a lot, but still - it's not much.

"Clarke," Lexa says and something in her tone makes Clarke turn her head to look at her. She looks almost defeated, Clarke thinks, pale and drawn beneath her war paint.

"I was wrong," Lexa says, looking straight at Clarke. "We still have a very long way to go, but with the Skaikru's help I think we might be able to do this. And... I should not have made any decisions regarding the Skaikru, or... or you, without consulting with you first. I should have trusted you, instead. That was my mistake and I hope you can forgive me, because I don't think I can do this without you, Clarke."

Clarke swallows, her throat suddenly closing up. "You took me in, Lexa. Gave me a home, your heart - hell, a chance to even survive in the first place. _Your people_ took me in. Gave me a place to belong when I thought I was alone in the whole world. And you just _ripped_ that from me in some misguided attempt to keep me from having to choose between the Trikru and the Skaikru."

"I know," Lexa says.

"You may be commander, Lexa, but our relationship is not part of your fucking reign."

"I know," Lexa says again, her shoulders slumping slightly.

"I have been your partner for the past four years and you just completely shut me out," Clarke continues, having gotten her steam to far up to easily stop. "That's not okay, Lexa!"

"I know!" Lexa glares at her, chastised and wounded. "I did not handle this to the best of my ability, I can recognize that. And I apologize."

"What's changed?" Clarke asks bluntly. "A couple of days ago, you were ready to throw me and the Skairu to the wolves. What has changed?"

"Much," Lexa says, looking away for a second. "I... miss you. We're better together. Both of us. You're miserable. I can tell."

"That might be because my wife has been planning to _kill all of my people_ ," Clarke says. She slumps back against the tree, all of her anger suddenly leaving her. The loss of it makes her feel hollow, as if it's what's been sustaining her these past days. "I'm getting tired, Lexa. I just wish everything was different. That it was all easy."

"You don't love me for my softness," Lexa remarks.

Despite herself, Clarke laughs. "No," she says, a small smile lifting the corners of her lips, "I suppose I don't."

Placing her palm against the tree next to Clarke's head, Lexa leans in slowly, taking her mouth in a soft kiss, reminding Clarke of that time four years ago when she had first done it. It, too, had been careful and tentative and all the more surprising for it.

Clarke opens her mouth beneath Lexa, grabs her waist to pull her closer, let her fall against her, silently offering her forgiveness. There are only on so many fronts she can fight battles all at once, and this is one she will gladly cede. At least for now.

She catches Lexa's bottom lips between her teeth in a sharp nip and Lexa gasps quietly, the hand gripping at Clarke's hip tightening. She lifts her head, rests her forehead against Clarke's. "There is a war council to attend," she says.

"Mhm," Clarke agrees, slipping one hand up Lexa's back to curl around her shoulder.

"Is this..." Lexa trails off, lowering her gaze.

It almost makes Clarke smile again, from an almost painful pang of tenderness. This has always been difficult for Lexa, them, the one thing she cannot approach or handle as a commander. It's territory she's not fully in charge of.

She sighs, curling her body impossibly closer to Lexa. "I honestly don't know, Lexa. But if we want to go through with this and hope to win this war, the two of us can't keep being divided."

Lexa presses her lips together and nods stoically.

But Clarke is not quite so merciless. "Also," she says, pulling Lexa down to her, to kiss her again, "I missed you too."

  
  


For the first time in days, Clarke actually feels as if her spirits has lifted. The road ahead may be long and hard, but if they can just get through this meeting and forge something of worth out of this alliance, they may actually have a chance. The threat of the Mountain men may be eradicated once and for all. It's a future she scarcely dares imagine: her people, both her people, down here under the blue Earth sky, working together.

But as she and Lexa steps back inside the tent, side by side, Abby gestures to her.

"What is it?" Clarke asks in a whisper, turning her back to the rest of the room to keep their conversation secret. She could do without anymore bad news.

"Octavia is gone," Abby says.

"What? Since when?" She runs it through her head quickly - it's been six days since she last saw Octavia. _Six days_. Shame floods her - she hadn't even noticed. Among all the chaos, she had just... forgotten. Missed it.

"We don't know," Abby whispers. "That kid Atom has been covering for her. But Bellamy's getting real anxious about talking to her and when I cornered Atom this time, he confessed. Said Octavia asked him to cover her tracks for a while."

"Six days," Clarke says. "I saw her six days ago. She had snuck into the Trikru camp and I told her to get back to the Ark. I should have realized that wasn't something she would willingly do." She presses her hand to her forehead. "Fuck, I should have kept an eye on her."

"Well, you did have other things on your mind," Abby says. "We need to send out a team to retrieve her. I'll talk to Major Byrne, get it sorted."

She is already moving, but Clarke stops her with a hand on her arm. "No," she says. The word is a dead weight on her tongue. Octavia is her friend, one that has been abandoned enough as it is. This will be a betrayal, and a painful one. "We can't risk upsetting this truce by sending our soldiers out into the woods. The Trikru won't accept it, not at this point."

"We'll tell them why!" Abby's lips has gone pale - a sure sign of anger.

"We can't," Clarke says, hating that her mother has to see this, see her like this. See what she has grown capable of doing. "The more people we tell, the bigger the chance is Bellamy finds out. He's out best bet of getting to the Mountain - his mission can't be endangered. Besides," she adds in reply to the reproach in her mother's eyes and the feel of ice in the pit of her stomach, "she wouldn't want to be found only to be locked up again."

It is the truth, but the words still feels like a lie, leaving an acrid taste behind them. She simply swallows it down and pushes past her mother without looking her in the face to take her place next to Lexa at the front of the assembly.

  
  


Indra sighs as she catches Lincoln sneaking out of the village and disappearing in among the trees, clearly convinced he's managing it unseen. The satchel hanging on his back is bulging from fullness - when he returns in a few hours, it will be suspiciously empty.

He's moving at a brisk pace, slipping further away quickly, so Indra grabs her sword and two bottles of water and sets off after him, letting him lead her deeper into the woods.

It doesn't take long to figure out where he's going - it's one of the many abandoned army bunkers littering the woods like fallen pines and Indra wonders what poor wounded beast he is keeping there this time. She hopes its nothing bigger than a wolf.

She hurries forward as he slows down in front of the well-hidden door and steps out from behind the trees as he unlocks it.

"Lincoln."

He startles and stands quickly in front of the bunker door, as if trying to hide it from her. "Indra."

"What are you doing?" she asks.

"Looking for supplies," he says, looking straight at her without blinking, even though he's already been discovered.

"What is it you've got there?" she asks. "A wolf? A deer? One of the mutant animals?"

He looks surprised, clearly convinced that he'd kept his past rescue missions secret from her. She had let him get away with it then, but it's different now. The tribes are on the march, Sky people are on the ground, and they have orders to ready themselves for attack and join their forces with the Commander's before the next full moon. It is not a time for weakness.

Lincoln doesn't reply, so she simply shoves him out of the way, draws her sword and wrenches the door open with one hand, hoping nothing will come jumping out at them, but there is no movement.

She pushes the door open further and steps inside, weapon at the ready and an anxious Lincoln at her shoulder.

"Lincoln?"

Indra freezes.

A girl steps out of the shadows into the light spilling through the door. She looks at Indra and, to Indra's growing surprise, gives her a respectful nod. " _Al aik Octavia_..." she begins with an atrocious accent, but Lincoln interrupts her.

"Octavia." This time Lincoln is the one pushing past Indra, going to the girl. "I told you to light the candles I brought instead of sitting here in darkness."

The girl just shrugs, her unflinching gaze still fixed on Indra.

Indra lowers her sword and looks at Lincoln. "She's a Sky girl isn't she?" she says through a heavy sigh. "I think I would have preferred a wounded wolf."

  
  


"A _week_?" Indra is fuming with rage. "Have you kept her here for a whole week? What about her people? What would you have done if they had came looking for her with enough fire power to wipe all of us out!" She pokes a hard finger into Lincoln's chest. "I know of your soft heart, Lincoln, but this isn't softness - this is _stupidity_. They must already be looking for her!"

"They're not," the girl says. She's lying on the one of the pallet, spinning a Trikru knife in one hand with a well-practiced flick of her wrist. Lincoln's not only been sheltering and feeding her - he's been arming and training her too, gods have mercy.

"And how can you be so sure of that?" Indra says.

"They don't care about me," Octavia says through a shrug, bitterness sharp in her tone. "I'm a fuck-up, a mistake. Should never have been born. You don't have to worry - they won't look for me."

"You're one of their own, lost in a hostile place," Indra says. "They'll look for you."

"Yeah, well, in that case I'm not gonna let them find me," Octavia says and Indra has to rest the urge to roll her eyes. The foolish defiance of youth.

"Why did you bring her here?" Indra asks Lincoln, in Trigedasleng.

"I saw her out in the woods. She was heading for Monow territory and I followed. Then she fell and hurt her ankle, so I helped."

Indra shakes her head. "She is the enemy."

"Last word we got there was an alliance in the works right now," Lincoln says.

"It won't hold," Indra says.

"The Commander seems to think so."

Indra scoffs. "Lexa is smarter than that. She's luring them in, to use them for cannon fodder in the coming fight. The moment we don't need them anymore, she will break theatalliance. They're too dangerous to let live."

"Clarke is Skaikru," Lincoln says.

To that Indra has no reply. She is close to the Commander - she knows how she feels about the Sky girl. But it was different then, were there was only one of her.

"Clarke?" Octavia breaks in, swinging her legs over the pallet to stand, fastening the knife in her belt with quick fingers. "What did you say about Clarke?"

"You know Clarke?" Indra asks.

"She was my friend," Octavia says. "My brother has a crush on her. She looked after me and the rest back on the Ark. I thought she was dead until I saw her in your Commander's camp. We all did."

"Well, this changes nothing," Indra says without bothering to switch back into Trigedasleng. She turns to Lincoln. "In a week's time, we march for the Commander's camp. Get rid of her before then."

  
  


Clarke is sitting on her old bed in her old room feeling out of place, almost hesitant to touch any of her old stuff, afraid that her hands will taint her childhood innocence. The drawings and paintings still decorating the walls are cringe-worthy to look at, after all these years, but the sight of them still makes her nostalgic for those days where her biggest problem in the world was convincing Wells to help her steal crayons from the supply room.

"Bellamy asked after her again," Abby says, making her jump in surprise. Her mother closes the door carefully behind her and steps fully into the room, hands in her pocket and with pursed lips. "I think he might be on to the lie. But there isn't much he can do, of course. I still think we should send someone out after her."

Clarke looks down at her hands. Back on the Ark, they had been soft. Now they are rough with callouses and scars, marked with Earth life. "These woods are full of dangers," Clarke says. "If I had known earlier..." She swallows. "As it is now, I doubt that Octavia made it far out there all alone."

"We should at least try!"

Clarke shakes her head. "We can't."

Her mother sighs heavily, but makes another attempt. "Clarke..."

But Clarke doesn't let her finish. "Wells told me, you know," she says, keeping her eyes firmly fixed on a piece of floor right in front of her. There is a stain there, from where Clarke spilled some red paint a long time ago. It looks a bit like dried blood. "About Dad. About what you did. It was just before I fell down - can't have been more than three or four days."

Abby says nothing, but Clarke can hear her pull in a sharp breath.

"I hated you," she continues. "For such a long time, I hated you. And myself, for how long I had spent hating Wells in your place. And him, too, for taking that upon himself. For letting me hate him and for trying to protect me from the truth. For a long time, it ate me up inside. But then," she says, turning to look at her mother, "I understood. I learned that sometimes in order to survive, to build a future, you have to do horrible things. I finally understood why you did what you did. I don't blame you for doing what you thought would save everything you believed in, but don't pretend you're morally superior to me, Mom. Don't pretend you wouldn't have done the same, if you had to."

Abby is quiet for a long while later, and then she says, "I just want you - and me - to remember that we are the good guys."

Clarke gives a nod, even though she isn't sure she believes that there even are any good guys any more.

"I think today went well," Abby says after another stretch of silence. "There's a bit to go, but I think both sides are amenable to an alliance."

"Yeah," Clarke agrees. "I'm surprised at how easily Kane and Jaha accepted the collaboration."

"No, you're not," Abby says. "You knew exactly what you did when you played the people against us. You've always been a bit of an instigator, Clarke." There is a bit of consternation in her voice, but it's mostly overshadowed by pride.

Clarke can't help but smile.

"You and Lexa left and returned together," Abby says, keeping her tone light. "From that first break we had, I mean. I have to confess, I was bit surprised to find you still here on the Ark."

Clarke shrugs. "What would the people say?" she tries to joke, but her voice sounds flat even to her own ears. "I just... want to take it slow. A lot has happened and everything's a mess, and I just don't really know where I stand right now."

"Well, as long as you get enough sleep," Abby says, darting forward to press a quick kiss to Clarke's forehead. "Just go to the sickbay if you need anything to help you with that - I refuse to see you collapse again."

"I promise," Clarke says.

"Goodnight then," Abby says.

"Goodnight, Mom."

  
  


"Do you ever sleep?"

Raven lifts her head from the comm-device she's working on only to see Anya in the doorway, leaning a hand against it to support herself. She smiles. "Neither do you, it seems," she says. "Come on in."

Anya walks forward slowly and sits down in front of her.

Raven picks up a screwdriver and opens up the back of the comm. A lot of their tech got damaged in the fall and she's doing her best by salvaging what she can from the busted stuff to use in the repair of the stuff that actually may still be saved. It's endless work and like building a fricking Frankenstein monster of mechanics. "So, did you want something or do you just have trouble sleeping?"

Anya says nothing. That's okay, Raven supposes. She talks plenty enough for two people anyway.

"I'm trying to figure out away to get around the Mountain's stupid jamming signal," she says. "And to get a couple more comms up and running. Most of them were in this once crate that got crushed in the fall, so I'm basically just wading my way through trash here."

Anya is staring at the devices and tools spread out all over the table intently, raking through a pile of screws and bolts with one hand. "You can't jam a horn with a signal," she says.

Raven laughs. "No, you can't," she agrees. "But making one is a bit beyond my skills. I've got machine oil running through my veins, they used to tell me back in ed." She wrangles the backpiece of the comm back on - it's a bit dented - and tries flipping it on. A small light at the top glows green. "Look at that," she says, pleased, and puts it aside.

"You should be building weapons," Anya says.

"I am," Raven says. "The council got me a _shit-ton_ of gunpowder. I'm building enough bombs to make the whole Mountain go boom."

"That is a sight I cannot wait to see," Anya says, her voice laced with hurt and sorrow.

Raven picks her screwdriver back up and starts picking open another comm. There is a part of her that instinctively likes the Trikru woman - she's tough as hell, walking around with an injury like that, and there is just something about her that makes Raven want to get to know her, but the heavy emotional stuff always makes her slightly uncomfortable.

"We'll make it happen," Raven says.

Anya is silent for a moment, watching her work. "You're quite resourceful, you Sky girls," she says eventually.

"I bet Clarke made quite the impression on you all," Raven says through a small grin.

"She did," Anya says, sounding grudging. "On our Commander, at least."

"She told me the two of you were friends," Raven says.

"Comrades in arms, perhaps," Anya says and Raven laughs again, bending forward to grab one of the screws next to Anya's elbow. Her necklace drops forward, the raven dancing merrily on its chain.

Anya's hand drops forward to catch it, turning it over between her fingers to study it.

"A raven," she says. "Among us, it symbolizes intelligence and futurity. It's a symbol of strength and hope."

"My boyfriend made it for me," Raven says. "Finn." His name carries a strange feeling with it. For so long, Finn was all she had in the world, the only person that stood by her when everyone else abandoned her. But it's been so long since they were an actual couple, actually together, and they are both such different people now. Sometimes she feel like she can barely remember the sound of his voice, the flash of his smile. There has been too much distance between them. But regardless, she still loves him. She always will.

Her hand tightens around the screwdriver. "He is inside the Mountain," she says, fear like a lining of ice in the bottom of her stomach. "I don't know whether he's alive or dead."

"For us," Anya says, "the moment someone steps inside the Mountain, we consider them dead and lost, regardless of their fate."

"But you tried to rescue someone," Raven says. "Your second."

"Yes," Anya says. "And it was the most foolish decision I've ever made as a leader. I put my entire clan, my entire people, at risk for one person. She wouldn't have wanted that."

"No," Raven says hollowly, her thoughts straying again to Finn again - Finn who gave up all for her. "It's not an easy thing to handle, having someone sacrifice their entire life to save yours."

Again, the silence falls for a long moment, but it's a companionable one, broken only by the clink of steel tools against the table top.

"I need to return to my people," Anya says after a while, rising strenuously from her seat. "I was only at the Ark for a check-up with Dr Griffin."

"Or you could hang around a little while longer," Raven says, putting the comm and her tools down with a clatter. "I was just about to go and grab some dinner and I bet you're dying to try some Sky people food."

"I am not," Anya says. "But I suppose I could have some in any case." She sits back down.

"Great," she says, rising to her feet. "I'll be right back."

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the penultimate chapter of the story, people!

"Not a word," Clarke tells Lexa as she walks into the tent they used to share, all the belongings she's taken out of it during the past weeks in the bag slung over her shoulder. "I can't sleep at the Ark. It keeps making weird _noise_." She lets the bag fall to her feet. "And it smells off."

"You can take the bed," Lexa says, already rising from where she's been sitting against the headboard going over the schematics of the Mountain interior provided by Bellamy. "I'll sleep on the floor tonight and we'll work something else out tomorrow."

"No," Clarke says, quickly toeing off her shoes and throwing herself on the other side of the bed. "This is fine."

Lexa raises her eyebrows, puts the maps aside. "For you perhaps," she says, sharply but not unkindly, and makes to rise again.

Clarke stops her with a hand around her wrist. "Please stay," she implores.

Slowly, Lexa sinks back against the pillows.

Clarke rests her head on her arm and looks up at Lexa where she's sitting softly outlined by the warm candlelight. Her crossed legs are bare and Clarke, like on so many other nights, cannot help but reach out and rest her hand gently on her thigh, thumb going to stroke along the curve of the tattoo inked there.

Lexa says nothing, does not move.

Clarke, hand still tracing the intricate designs covering the skin of Lexa's thighs, shuffles closer and kisses her hip, nudging the edge of her sleeping shirt away with her nose to do so. Lexa's skin is deliciously warm against her lips and Clarke's mouth lingers against the curve of her hip, relearns the shape of it with her tongue.

She curves her other hand around the inside of Lexa's thigh, letting it simply rest there, feeling the powerful muscle flex beneath the grip of her fingers. She doesn't need the deep sigh Lexa lets out as confirmation to know how wet she's probably getting, how much she wants this.

"Clarke," Lexa says and when Clarke looks up, her eyes are closed, her head fallen back against the headboard. "Clarke, I know how I wish to interpret this, but..."

She pauses as Clarke begins to move, rises to her knees and moves one leg across Lexa to straddle her lap.

Lexa swallows, even as her hands come up to cup Clarke's hips, pressing her down against her in a most delicious way. She opens her eyes and this time she is the one looking up at Clarke. "Am I making the right assumption here?" Her voice is very quiet.

Clarke pauses before saying, "Yes," and there is more behind that one syllable than simple words can convey. It means _I love you_ and _I've missed you_ and _I trust you to do the right choice_ and _I wish this wasn't always bigger than the two of us_.

The kiss is, in the end, just another of thousands they've already shared, but at the same time it's something else, something new; a feeling of coming home. Lexa's lips pass over hers, dry and gentle, hand going up to Clarke's jaw to angle her slightly to the left and then there's wetness as Lexa's lips part and the kiss deepens, turns desperate and into a thing of lust and want.

"Clarke," Lexa murmurs into the kiss, a soft, broken sound, and Clarke pushes closer to her, arms wound tightly around her back, and keeps on kissing her breathless.

  
  


"Bellamy has done an amazing job," Clarke says, leaning over the rough sketches they've created from the verbal outlines Bellamy has been providing of the Mountain's interior. "This actually means we finally have an edge on them, Lexa."

"Mm," Lexa agrees, her lips finding the soft skin of Clarke's shoulder and lingering there. Her hand has stolen its way up Clarke's shirt and is resting, warm and grounding, low on her stomach.

Enclosed in Lexa's arms, her breath coming in small, distracting puff of air against her throat and her hand ticklishly close to more sensitive places, it is hard not to feel dangerously hopeful about the oncoming battle.

She twists her neck backwards to press a quick kiss to Lexa's lips before turning back to the map before her and her thoughts to the less good parts of Bellamy's rapport. "They've started bleeding them," she says.

"Bellamy didn't know for sure," Lexa says. "From what he's seen and what the others have said, they've been treated like esteemed guests." Despite her soft touch, there is a sharp edge of steel in her voice.

"They've been tested and prodded and treated like lab rats," Clarke says. "Being fed chocolate cake hardly makes up for that. And Murphy's gone missing."

"But from what Monroe reported to Bellamy, he had angered the guards by hitting one of them. Perhaps he's just locked up somewhere."

"Well, I don't think so," Clarke says stubbornly. She knows that she is right; she can feel it in her gut. "We know very well what they do to prisoners, Lexa."

"And you know as well as I that if those fifteen - seventeen now - people had been Trikru, more than half of them would already be drained and thrown out to rot, Clarke."

"I know," Clarke sighs, because it's true, but these are her people. Not because they're Skaikru, but because of what they came to share, all locked up together back on the Ark. She was the one holding them together then, keeping them from going off on each other, and she can't abandon them now. Never would have, if she had been given the choice.

There is a long moment of tense silence, before Lexa, too, sighs and moves Clarke more firmly against her chest. "We will see them fall," she says, her lips brushing against Clarke's shoulder in a quick kiss.

Clarke leans back against Lexa. "We will," she agrees.

Gently, Lexa's hand curl around her jaw and pulls her into a kiss, long and sweet, Lexa's arm steady across Clarke's chest as she teases her lips open, sucks the lower one between her own, the wet press of her mouth making Clarke's knees go week.

"Clarke, about those tests..."

At the sound of Abby's voice, Lexa wrenches herself away from Clarke and moves a foot to the left as if it isn't completely obvious to Abby, standing in the opening to the tent with her tablet under her arm, what they've been doing.

Abby takes a slow step inside and lets the tent flap fall close behind her. She looks between them knowingly before clearing her throat. "About those tests Bellamy said the Mountain men had done on our kids before Murphy went missing," she says, picking off as if she never left off. "I think they discovered something in their blood."

"What kind of something?" Clarke asks.

Abby steps up to the table and swipes her finger across the tablet to unlock it. "A few of the Trikru allowed me to take their blood samples," she says, "and I compared them with ours. When we left the Earth a hundred years ago, the Ark survivors where genetically engineered to be able to not just spend a prolonged time in space, but to actually _live_ up there. While the Trikru evolved to withstand Earth-level radiation, we were altered to cope with _space_ radiation." Abby is flipping through notes and diagrams on her tablet, faster than Clarke has any chance to even try to read or understand.

"And what does that mean?" she asks impatiently.

"It means that while regular infusions of Trikru blood is enough to keep the Mountain men alive and moderately healthy, a big enough dose of our blood - or at least our bone marrow - should be able to heal them, to make it possible for them to leave their Mountain."

"And walk freely under the sky? That cannot happen!" Lexa spits. Her hand, white-knuckled, goes to the handle of her sword, as if the possibility of the Mountain men freeing themselves of their prison is a threat she can dispel by brute force.

"That's why they've taken Murphy," Clarke says. Her voice sounds hollow and far away. "To drain him so that they can walk under the sun again."

"Also, Bellamy just called in," Abby says. She pulls in a deep breath. "Fox has disappeared too. And Roma and Monroe have done their best to cause disturbances in order to let Bellamy work in secret, but they have to walk a fine line or they'll probably be next."

Helplessly, Clarke turns to Lexa.

"Our forces are on the march," Lexa says, eyes softening in the face of Clarke's despair. "As soon as the acid fog is disabled and we have a clear plan of attack, we will move on the Mountain and free the prisoners."

Clarke's hands, which she has been clenching at her sides, suddenly relaxes. "The prisoners," she says slowly, her brow furrowed in thought. She looks at Lexa again. "Combined with the Skaikru, how many prisoner do they have in there? Fifty? Seventy?"

"We have no way of knowing for sure," Lexa says quietly. "But yes, something like that."

"If Bellamy can release them and get word to the Skaikru prisoners, we won't just have one inside man," Clarke says. "We have an _army_ in there - it just needs to be freed."

She moves to the table, grabs the rough sketch of a map over the tunnels they've drawn from Bellamy's description. "If we put a team here, they can move in and converge with the prisoners inside, give them some needed muscle to force their way out. Meanwhile, we attack the front gate, to act as a diversion."

"It won't do any good," Lexa says, walking over to stand by Clarke's side again. "The front gate can't be opened."

"We'll find a way," Clarke says.

  
  


"I won't go back," Octavia tells Lincoln. He had told her to come with him and she had, without a word, let him lead her to the edge of his village where he'd hidden her in a thorny, wide shrub. "I'd rather run straight into the woods, take my chances than return to them."

Lincoln smiles at her. He dips his thumb in a jar he's holding in his hand. "Close your eyes," he says and draws his thumb across her closed eyelids, up across her eyebrows and down on her cheeks in one even, well-practiced gesture.

"Open," he says, and she does, blinking a little at the sting of the war paint. He has already helped her arrange her hair in a series of intricate braids - with the war paint and the jacket his handing her, she must look exactly like one of the Trikru.

She shrugs the jacket on, fastens the blade in its scabbard across her back.

"You will follow at a safe distance as we march to the Commander's camp," Lincoln says. "As soon as we're there, there will be enough Trikru around for you to safely blend in. Just don't try and talk too much," he says, his smile widening. He has been trying to teach her as much of his language as possible, but while Octavia has learned to understand a lot of words and simple phrases, her accent is still terrible.

"Almost thought you brought me to your village to hand me over to Indra," Octavia jokes a little weakly.

Lincoln laughs quietly and presses both their foreheads together quickly, one hand coming up to cup her face. "Try and get some sleep," he says. "We move at first light."

With a final, long kiss, he's gone, disappearing into the village. Octavia sighs, shuffling around on the ground to find a position as comfortable as possible before settling in for a long, sleepless night.

  
  


She does manage to fall asleep though, somehow, and wakes to loud, confused yelling and the clang of steel, and for a brief, panicked moment she thinks that she has overslept, that Indra's warriors is already leaving, that she's about to miss them and be left behind. But then she hears a bloodcurdling scream right next to her and realizes that this is a fight, not a march.

Without stopping to think, she struggles free of the bush, drawing her sword as soon as she's clear of its clinging branches. There is fighting going on all around, Indra's warriors against large, snarling men with their faces streaked with brown like the color of dried blood and unnerving, lifeless eyes.

 _Reapers_ , she thinks, remembering what Lincoln's told her about them. The Reapers are outnumbered and the Trikru are cutting them down one by one, but as Octavia watches, she sees Indra, furiously engaged by a Reaper whose face is covered by a grinning skull, unwittingly charged from behind by another one.

With her sword gripped tightly in hand, Octavia rushes forward with a shrill cry and drives the sword through the Reaper's back, grunting as steel meets something hard - maybe armour, maybe bone - pushing hard to drive it in as deep as she is able. She rips the sword free and stabs it in again, bringing the Reaper to his knees.

Indra finishes off the one with the skull and turns, eyes widening at the sight of Octavia and the Reaper fallen at her feet.

Around them, the fighting slowly dies out as the few remaining Reapers are overpowered and taken down.

"Lincoln said he'd told you to run off," Indra says. She shakes her head and bends down to rip a piece of fabric off the Reaper's armour. She straightens and uses it to wipe off her blade. "I didn't believe him, but I didn't think he would be so stupid as to bring you here."

"Take me with you," Octavia says, triumph and bloodlust pumping in her veins, making her feel reckless and untouchable. "You need as many warriors as you can get and I can fight!"

Indra scoffs.

"I saved your life!"

"You did and I'm grateful, Sky girl," Indra says. "But that was luck, not skill."

"Octavia!"

She turns to see Lincoln rushing to her side. "Are you unharmed?"

"Yes," Octavia says, taking his hands as he reaches for her. There is blood on him. A lot of it. "And you?"

He nods. "I'm fine." He turns to Indra. "What's this? A handful of Reaper's attacking a whole village? Have they gone mad?"

"The Mountain knows something is happening," Indra says grimly, re-sheathing her sword. "They're trying to catch us off guard, weaken our ranks. But we won't give them another chance. We march now." She barks a loud order in Trigedasleng, before turning back to Lincoln and Octavia. "The girl can come," she says, "but if she falls behind, we leave her for the Reapers."

  
  


"Shouldn't you be in the war tent?" Raven asks as Clarke comes into the comm room. "Listen to wifey make big speeches to the all Clan leaders about overcoming obstacles together and whatnot."

Clarke snorts at 'wifey' and shakes her head in reply. "I'm sure Lexa will be fine on her own. I need to know how Bellamy's doing with the acid fog. It's imperative that we get it taken down soon, or everything will fail."

"I know, I know," Raven says. "I haven't heard from Bellamy in a couple of hours so he should call in any minute now. Last time we spoke, he had found some sort of machine room that he was going to examine. Let's keep our fingers crossed."

"Story of my life," Clarke mutters under her breath.

Both she and Raven jump as the comm crackles to life. "Raven?"

"I'm here, Bellamy," Raven says. "So's Clarke. Have you gotten a look at that room?"

"Not yet." Bellamy sounds tense. "We've got a huge problem."

"What?" Clarke says.

"Somehow, the Mountain has found out that all the clans have gathered in the same place and are planning to drop a missile on the Trikru camp to try and wipe them out once and for all."

When, Clarke tries to ask, but she has gone ice cold all over and when she opens her mouth, it is as if her throat has closed up.

Instead, it is Raven who asks it.

"Right after dusk," Bellamy says. "In about an hour."

  
  


Clarke moves as if through a daze, ignoring Raven who is calling after her as she bursts out of the comm room and runs through the hallways, out of the Ark. She knows exactly what she needs to do - what she will do - but she have to keep it at arm's length, just for now, to pretend for a little while that she is rushing into the Trikru camp to save them all.

The can't evacuate. If they do, the Mountain men will know about Bellamy and then they will never take Mount Weather. All will be lost.

When she crashes into their tent, to her relief finding Lexa alone, she is breathing fast and rough, feeling as if the panic is threatening to cleave her chest right open and lay all her sins bare.

"A-a missile," she pants. "The Mountain is planning to drop a _missile_ on the camp. We need to get out of here. _Now_."

Lexa nods and stands. She moves to a wooden chest in a corner of the tent, opens it and takes out two woolen capes. "Put this on," she tells Clarke.

"Abby," Clarke says, mindlessly taking the garment Lexa holds out. "Where is my mother?"

"She is back at the Ark. She was needed in the sick-bay."

"Okay," Clarke breathes, hating herself for the relief spreading through her. "Gods, Lexa, we can't do this. We still have a chance, they need a spotter for this sort of thing - if we... if we take him out, they can't aim the missile. We can still save everyone, we..."

"Clarke," Lexa break in, her hand gentle on her arm, but her tone even and stern. "We have to go now." Her fingers tightens and Clarke has to look away from her, from the look in her eyes. "We can't save them." Her voices hitches.

"I know," Clarke says, stepping into the circle of Lexa's arm, even though they don't have time for this. "I know. But..."

"No," Lexa says. "We move now. The darkness will cover us. If we do this, we will be able to make the Mountain can never hit us like this again. If we don't, we will never win this war. It will all be over."

"I know," Clarke says. She does - she knew it the minute Bellamy told her about the missile. It doesn't make it any easier.

"We have to go," Lexa repeats. She takes Clarke's hand, twines their fingers securely together. "Now."

  
  


The detonation racks the ground and lights up the sky with its fiery blast. Clarke's face is wet with tears and Lexa is holding herself unnaturally still beside her, but Clarke can't bear to turn and look her in the eye and they stand side by side staring down into the vale with the ensuing quiet ringing almost painfully in their ears.

"I won't return until that spotter is dead," Clarke says eventually.

"I will lead you to him," Lexa promises, her grip around Clarke's shoulder hard enough to hurt, but right now, Clarke relishes that small ache, wishes it was even close enough to dull the one inside of her, ripping her heart to shreds as surely as that missile tore the Trikru camp asunder. "There will never be enough blood to repay all of this, not even if the Mountain men died a hundred deaths each."

"Bellamy says there are innocent people in there," Clarke says. Her voice sound strangely rough to her own ears. "Children. And a girl who's helped him. Maya. Maya Vie." She is not telling Lexa, she realizes - she's telling herself. Reminding herself that there are people inside that Mountain that are not monsters, people that are just doing what they think they have to in order to survive.

"Right now, I don't care," Lexa says. She steps back from Clarke to pick up her sword and fasten it at her hip. "Let's go. The faster we get to the spotter, the faster we will see the Mountain men dead."

  
  


Octavia doesn't notice how the uneven, jagged stone bites into the flesh of her hands until she looks down and sees the red smeared rusty over the rough surface of the one she's currently carrying, handing off to Lincoln with a grunt. She ignores it and moves to wrench another rock free.

She is carefully ignoring the people she's working side by side with - the Trikru sending her glances laced with suspicion and the Skaikru with wonder. It had taken them a while to recognize her, halfway into a long day of digging. She had hoped they wouldn't at all, but all that's secondary now. There is nothing but the endless digging and the scrape of heavy rock, the need to get the people buried beneath the rubble to safety.

The sun has already set before they have managed to dig a hole big enough to haul the wounded out. That's even harder work, trying to get people out as fast as they are able without juggling them too much and worsen any damage either to them or the fragile mound of the rock threatening to cave in any moment despite their efforts to support it.

Octavia, like everyone around her, is pushing through on sheer will, long since past the point of utter exhaustion. It takes a while for her to notice the hush that has fallen over the camp - she ducks out from under the landslide only to see Clarke and Lexa stepping forward to the edge of the detonation site. Through her relief at not being forced to find Clarke crushed among the stones, she notices that there is blood on Clarke's hands and a hard set to her mouth that Octavia, through all the years she's known Clarke, has never seen before.

Whispers start up all around, voices murmuring in relief at finding their leader still alive, and coalescing in scattered shouts of "Heda! Heda!" It gains volume as all the Trikru takes up the call. "Heda!"

Lexa raises a hand and silence falls abruptly. The look on her face is tremendous, hard as flint and without a shred of gentleness. "What happened here will not stand," she says, her voice strong and clear. "The Mountain will fall. The dead will be avenged!"

Cheers erupt in response to their leader's rallying cry and continues until Abby pushes to the front of the crowd. She looks exhausted too, having run back and forth between the Trikru and the Skaikru camp all day, between the sickbay and the missile crash site to do all that she possibly can for the people hurt in the attack.

"Enough!" she calls. "There are still wounded in the wreckage. Let's get to work!"

They do. But there is a change in the air - where they before toiled in sheer defiance to their exhaustion and despair, people are now moving with a different kind of purpose, fueled by rage and the promise of future justice, instilled in them by their mighty leader.

Octavia is just about to get back into the crater when a hand lands on her shoulder. She turns around, only to come face to face with Indra. Her face is drawn with pain from her wounded leg, her breathing a little elevated. In the corner of her eye, she sees Lincoln looking at them curiously.

"You've done good work today, Octavia of the Sky people," she says. "There's surprising determination in you. If you're still want to learn how to use that sword, I'll be willing to teach you - as my second."

Her words leave Octavia struck dumb. "Second?" she finally chokes out. "But that's... Why would you to that?"

"First lesson," Indra says, "never question me." She looks imploringly at Octavia. "I need an answer, Sky girl."

"I... Yes," Octavia says, hurriedly, suddenly deathly afraid that the possibility will be snatched away from her before she has time to seize it. "Yes, I'll be your second."

"Good," Indra says with a slow nod.

Octavia turns back to the endless work of moving stones, the ache in her wounded hands and the tiredness in her limbs all but forgotten, a curious warmth spreading in her chest at the thought of being _wanted_ , at this the barest hint of a possibility of finally finding a place where she can belong.

She hands off another rock to Lincoln, catches his tired eyes, and smiles.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaand it's done!
> 
> thank you so much to everyone who has followed this, who has read, commented and left kudoses. it's greatly appreciated and I'm thrilled that people has seemed to like this so much. :)

"Bellamy?" Raven's fingers, that have been tapping restlessly against the table top for the past thirty minutes, still at the sudden, unmistakable sound of an explosion. "Bellamy! Answer me!"

"I'm here, I'm here," Bellamy's breathless voice comes crackling through the speaker. "I had to blow up the control room, though. It's safe to say they know someone's here now."

Worry stab through Raven, sharp and vicious. She is sick of sitting here, unable to do anything but walk Bellamy through the mechanics of the Mountain's control rooms. She is eager to finally get in there and blow some damn stuff up herself. "You can never go wrong with an explosion," she says lightly, going for a joke. "Try and stay safe, Bellamy. Just sit tight and we'll come for you."

"Copy that," Bellamy says. "And Raven? Good work. I couldn't have done it without you."

Raven smiles. "Just stay alive. Raven out."

She barely has time to shut off the comm before she's out of her chair, ready to rush off and relay the good news to Clarke. She wrenches open the door, just to come face to face with a startled Anya and before she has time to think about it, she is reaching out to keep the other woman, still weak from her wound, from accidentally toppling backwards.

"Sorry," she says and she realizes that she's laughing, the merry sound bubbling up from somewhere deep inside where there before had been a big, hard, tightly wound knot of worry. "We did it, Anya! We disabled the acid fog! Bellamy should be sending up the signal right now. We're ready to go!"

Anya smiles back at her, but it's dimmed by the wistfulness in her eyes. "A glorious day," she says. She gestures at the bandage across her chest. "The most important battle in the history of my people, and I will have no part in it."

"That is not true," Raven protests immediately. "Without you, Bellamy would never have gotten inside the Mountain in the first place. And without your willingness to put your own life at risk for Clarke, I doubt Abby would have sided with the Trikru against the Council so easily. You're just a much a piece in this puzzle as anyone else."

Anya's eyes flick up to meet Raven's. Her smile turns small, but more sincere. "Thank you, Sky girl," she says.

She is still holding on to Anya's arm, Raven realizes belatedly and, inadvertently, her fingers flexes against her warm skin.

It's like something clicks into place, right there and then, and suddenly she sees the past weeks in a completely different light: Anya spending her every available moment in here with her, the gentle swoop her stomach makes every time she catches one of Anya's rare smiles, the way the other woman's presence has been lighting up this boring-ass room and keeping her from going completely out of her mind from inertia.

This is neither the time nor the place for this, but even so, Raven leans forward and - stepping closer to Anya, pulling the arm she's still holding around her own waist - leans up to kiss her, uneven and messily, greedily swallowing down the sound Anya makes as her hands tighten around Raven, her mouth opening beneath hers to let her in.

Raven moans as the touch of her tongue sliding between her lips and pushes herself closer to Anya, hands already scrambling to undo her own pants as they stumble backwards into the room, the door falling shut behind them.

It is not until Raven's hand runs up Anya's arm and to her shoulder, feeling the texture of the gauze beneath her hand, that she finally breaks that first, astounding kiss, breathing heavily. With the air thick with pent-up lust between them, she pants, "We should, uh... Your injury..."

Raven's back hits the edge of the table as Anya moves in to kiss her again, pressing her body up against her in a long line of enticing, delicious warmth. "I am healed enough for this," she murmurs and Raven moans again, hands scrabbling behind her to heave herself up on the table.

She closes her arms around Anya's neck, her legs around her hips, and presses her nose against her hairline for a brief moment, to breathe her in, before letting Antya drag her down into another kiss, eager to let the other woman devour her.

  
  


Lexa's hand stops her just as Clarke's about to shrug her jacket on, fingers tracing delicately across the inked head of a horse curving around her deltoid muscle.

"Remember when I taught you to ride a horse?" Lexa asks quietly.

"Yes," Clarke says with a smile. "I remember." It's a fond memory - it was on Alice's back, with Lexa by her side, Clarke for the first time actually realized that she might actually be able to live down here. Not just survive, but live, and thrive.

Lexa takes a deep breath and then her hand is suddenly gripping Clarke's chin, drawing her into a fierce, hard kiss. "This battle may be my end, but if it is so, I'll find my way back to you, do you understand?" she whispers imploringly against Clarke's lips. "Promise me the same, _keyron_."

While respecting and occasionally finding solace in the Trikru's - and Lexa's - view of the afterlife as a never-ending circle of lifetimes, Clarke herself has never shared it. But here, in this moment, on the eve of the battle, she is suddenly desperate to believe that if either of them should fall, they will meet and love again in another life. That this will not be their end.

"I promise," she says, pressing those words like a sacred vow into the soft skin of Lexa's throat. "I promise."

Lexa clasps a hand around her neck and they stand still like that for a long moment, together maybe for the very last time, until the quiet is broken by a loud call from outside the tent, "Commander! The signal!"

It is enough to bring them back to reality. They separate - Clarke putting on the jacket she still has in her hand and Lexa sliding her newly-honed sword into its sheath at her hip - and march out of the tent side by side, where the whole camp has exploded into hurried, efficient movement like some sort of well-oiled machinery.

Clarke follows Lexa's eyes as she gazes out across her army, gathered around her and ready to go to war, hungry for blood and retribution. An unreadable expression crosses over her lover's face - a terrifying mix of fear and hope and bloodlust.

"Sound the horn!" she orders in Trigedasleng and the long, harrowing tone of the horn calling to battle echoes throughout the vale. "Today we move for the Mountain! With the next dawn, we will see that blood answer blood!"

The ground shakes with the deafening war cry of the amassed Trikru as they answer their Commander.

"To war!" Lexa yells and as the horn blows anew, the army begins to move, heading for the Mountain and one final long night before the reckoning.

  
  


"The attack on the Mountain will take place on four fronts," Clarke says. "We are divided into four teams - two of which are moving into position as we speaks."

It's deathly quiet inside the tent during this final war council, the heavy silence only broken by the shuffle of clothing and clank of steel and weaponry. Clarke's heart is slamming against her ribcage, but she is curiously calm, her voice rattling off the plan once more without a hitch. It's the calm before the storm.

"Raven is leading the first team, who is just now taking the control room in order to cut the Mountain's power. Indra is leading the second down into the tunnels, to attack from the rear and help bring the prisoners out. Inside the Mountain, Bellamy is freeing the Skaikru and the Trikru prisoners, arming them with whatever they are able to find. While they fight their way out to join Indra's team in the tunnels, we will be positioned here."

She jabs her finger right into the ground before the great door in the miniature model they've built of the Mountain.

"This is where the main part of the army will be stationed and where we want the Mountain men's attention is focused, in order to give the others the chance to get out. Our job is to get that door open." She point to the miniature door and clears her throat. "According to our sources on the inside, that door has one flaw: that fact that it's look is electronic. That means that without power, the lock won't work. So when Raven cuts the power, we have a window of one minute to blow that lock open before the backup generator kicks in." She looks around the room. "If we don't get that door open before the backup power comes on, all will be lost."

"If that's the case, why not take out the back-up generator too?" Sergeant Miller asks.

Clarke takes a deep breath. "Without the back-up generator, everyone inside the Mountain will die. We will not be killing innocent bystanders." She doesn't wait for any objections before moving on. "Once we get the door open, the fighting will begin. They will throw everything they have at us, but, as I've said, that's what we want - to divert their attention and give Indra's team a chance to escort the prisoners out the back. And that's it. That's the plan."

She takes a step back, giving the floor to Lexa. Clarke has outlined the plan, giving everyone their objective - now it's time to rouse their blood.

"The Mountain has cast a shadow over these woods for too long," Lexa begins, letting her gaze move slowly across the room, and Clarke is suddenly overpowered by a wave of intense love for the woman before her, shouldering this burden she is far too young for, readying her people for the most significant battle in their history. "They've hunted us, controlled us, turned us into monsters. That ends today. The Mountain _will_ fall." The look on her face twists into something tremendously gruesome and beautiful. "As Clarke said, we spare the innocent. As for the guilty... _jus drein, jus daun_."

" _Jus drein, jus daun_ ," her generals immediately follow. " _Jus drein, jus daun_."

The sound turns into a chant, and Clarke, her eyes still fastened on Lexa, joins in. " _Jus drein, jus daun. Jus drein, jus daun!_ "

Even the Skaikru begins to repeat the words and soon enough the sound carries outside the tent and is taken up by the warriors stationed around it and beyond, causing it to grow into thunder as it spreads throughout the army, dark and threatening, and promising a storm of death.

  
  


As the lights on each side of the great door goes out, it seems as if all the electricity the Sky girl Raven and her team just deprived the Mountain of has been channeled into the night air, charging it with crackling, lightning-hot energy. This is the moment for which Lexa was born, for which she's trained her whole life, for which she has fought ever since taking over the command of the Trikru.

Already tasting a hint of the victory she hope is to come, her blood begins to roar in her veins, running hot with battle-lust and intense, terrifying hope. In just a moment, those doors will be wrenched open and justice will be served. Her people will be free.

It is not that easy. Of course it is not.

One moment, they are ready to lay the Mountain at their feet - with the next the detonator in Clarke's hand has failed to work and a squadron of her warriors lay slaughtered on the ground, their shields fallen and splintered.

The panic and the sudden, overwhelming fear of failure seems to bear with it the taste of blood, like the bite of sharp metal, at the back of her throat. They have failed; the door will withstand them - it cannot be opened from afar and any attempt to get closer will end in a hail of bullets.

And then Lincoln fires a single flaming arrow and, with it, faith is restored.

"We did it," Clarke breathes and Lexa looks over at her, savagely and eternally grateful to have her here at her side. Without Clarke, without the girl who fell from the sky and changed Lexa's world forever, this would never have been possible.

"You stay here," she tells Clarke. "I will take the shooters out. When they are dead, you get that door open and lead them to victory. _Heda_." Without waiting for a reply, Lexa presses a bruising kiss to her lips and turns, ordering a squadron of warriors to follow her and charges up the hillside, ducking low to avoid the endless bullet rain. She does not turn to look back once - after this battle, they will be reunited. In this life or the next.

The ensuing fight passes in a red haze. They manage to surprise the shooters, to sneak up on them from the rear, but even with their shields deflecting a lot of the fire, warriors are falling around her, their screams rendering the air, accompanied by the steady thump of bullets hitting their mark.

She can feel blood running down her face, taste it in her mouth, but nothing exists but the weight of the sword in her hand and the feel of it swiping and cutting through enemy flesh, the air thick with the smell of gunpowder and death. Some sort of rage seems to have overtaken her, turning her from battöe strategist to a berserk demanding the enemy lines to break before her by sheer force of will alone.

And then, suddenly, stillness. The shooting stops, and the remaining Mountain men, only four of them, shrink back. Lexa raises her sword to signal the Trikru to keep on. There is no honor in this war, never has been - they will cut the shooters down, whether they fight back or not.

But then a figure steps out in front of them, hands out, and Lexa orders her warriors to stand down. It's a man, without a hazmat suit, breathing the radiated Earth air unfiltered.

"Commander," he says, stopping right in front of her. "My name is Emerson, and I am here on behalf of President Wallace to offer you a deal."

Angry murmuring erupt among the warriors at her back. "Strike him down, Commander!" she hears Quint yell in Trigedasleng.

With the adrenaline coursing through her, she is hard pressed to see why she shouldn't do what he says, just ram her sword through the chest of this man and finish this.

"I'll listen," she says. "Before I'll cut your throat."

He smirks, as if he knows something she doesn't, and something about that, and his entire presence, galls her. Who is he but a leech and a parasite who has the fucking nerve to stand under their sky at the curtsey of the stolen blood in his veins?

" _Speak_ ," she spits at him.

"President Wallace offers to return your people and to promise never to hunt or hurt a single one of them ever again. In exchange, your entire army, down to the last soldier, will retreat." He says, and doesn't quiet as much as pause.

Lexa stares impassively at him. "Is that the whole cost of the bargain?"

"You will also leave the Skaikru prisoners to us and refrain from assisting them in any conflict between them and Mount Weather. Your Clarke is free to go with you, of course." His smile widens and Lexa is overwhelmed by a wish to slam her fist into his face, until it cracks open like a rotten fruit, to wipe that infuriating smirk away.

Instead, she thinks of all the lives that have been lost, on the countless more that this battle will cost, of all those that have already fallen in taking the door and this ledge. The cost of the bargain may be high, but so is the reward - two threats neutralized in one stroke.

Emerson is looking at her as if he knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she will accept the deal, sacrifice the Skaikru in order to secure a future for her own people. A new world, built for living, instead of on a shaky foundation of fear and a hundred years of warfare. Still, those hundred years of battle has shaped them into what they are, for better and worse, and the warrior in Lexa is protesting against the very idea of not giving in, but to strike any kind of understanding with these people, who have haunted hers for so long.

Still, they would live. So many of them would not have to die.

But, she thinks, staring right back at Emerson, the pale skin of his bare face stark in the dusk, if the Mountain men gain the ability to walk beneath the sky, there is nothing but the Trikru's numbers to protect them against an eventual attack. If they take the Mountain today, any negotiation will be solely on the Trikru's terms. If she accept the deal and the Mountain comes after them later, she won't have much to put up against them, not with the Mountain men walking the Earth.

She tries not to think of Clarke, of the way she would look at her when she learned what Lexa had done, should she accept the deal. Clarke would never abandoned the Skaikru, not willingly. Not for Lexa, not for anything.

 _The duty to protect my people comes first_. It's the words by which she has reigned. She thinks of the Skaikru, without whom this may never have happened, not like this, not now, maybe never. She thinks of what they have gained from this alliance, and what they have suffered beneath the Mountain.

She considers the risks and the gains, weighs them against each other for a long moment, hesitating just on the threshold of making her daunting decision, terrified that she's choosing the wrong option.

But, in the end, there is nothing she can do but turn to Emerson and say, "No."

  
  


EPILOGUE

The bleak autumn sun burns brightly in the sky, shadowed by the grey smoke billowing from the funeral pyres stretching between the foot of the Mountain and the Trikru camp.

Clarke is standing next to Raven in front of Finn's pyre. Tears are running silently down Raven's cheeks, but Clarke feels too numb to weep. The war is over, but so many were lost. And there were so many they were too late to save.

Anya comes up to Raven, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, and Raven leans against her, as a sob wrecks through her body.

Clarke leaves them to it and moves to stand next to Lexa just as she lights the final pyre, the one that holds not bodies, but just wood and grass, the one they're lighting for all those whose bodies were never recovered, who were left to rot beneath the Mountain.

" _Yu gonplei ste odon_ ," Lexa says and Clarke mouths the words along with her, takes her cold hand in hers when she steps back, the moonshine-doused wood rapidly catching fire in front of them.

All the Trikru are stand gathered in the vale, collectively mourning their many dead. Later, they will feast and rejoice that the war is over at last, but for now there is only silence, laying heavy across the plain, broken only by the crackling of the fire and the wind blowing through the brittle, dying grass.

"I do not know where to go from here," Lexa whispers, a secret, terrible confession. She is standing close enough that her breath, leaving white puffs in the chill air, intermingles with Clarke's.

Clarke puts her arm around her shoulders and kisses her temple, and Lexa leans against her, allowing herself a brief moment of weakness here in the aftermath of her greatest triumph.

"We will figure it out," Clarke mumbles into her hair. The future is lying open before them, a vast, unmentionable space, like a blank piece of paper awaiting the first touch of the pencil, the first splash of color. She presses a kiss against Lexa's lips, icy and wind-chapped beneath her own and smiles. "It's a brave new world."

 

**Author's Note:**

> I invented some words:  
>  _keryon_ , which means 'soul' in Trigedasleng. here it's also used to mean both 'beloved' as well as 'romantic partner'.  
>  _kliraun_ , a combination of _sonraun_ that means 'life' and _klir_ that means 'safe', used here as the name of Trikru housing.


End file.
